Newsletter April 2024 - Finish Him!

Hey everyone,

Another month has passed. Chaos continues to reign in the world, but I try to support people where I can, e.g. through donations. At work, I've been able to bring a few folks who lost their funding onto my projects. It may be spitting into the wind, but it helps, and it makes me feel better. Also, it feels good to be continuing to push important research forward.

That said, Under the Diamond Moon started because I felt a lot of anxiety around the changing climate. Writing is therapeutic, and my characters can say what I'm thinking in a much more blunt way than I ever would. As I worked through my second draft this month, I found that my characters had a lot more to say.

Since I'm talking about writing, I've focused my efforts this month on the opening. When I wrote it, I had ideas about what I would do in the book, so I tried to set them up in the first few chapters. Now that the ending is written, I need to do a lot of fixing at the beginning to trim threads that went nowhere and to start new threads that need to be there so the ending makes sense.

The second draft is where I have to fix all the plot holes, fill in the details, and flesh out the sketch of a first draft. By the end, it'll be a real book. I'll still have a lot of polishing to do, but the major structural work will be complete. The second draft is the hardest draft for me.

Fortunately, I have a great online writing group. This month, we critiqued each other's first chapters. My feedback was super useful. Folks loved the characters and the plot, but the pacing was too slow, and there was too much exposition. That's normal. But it's also hard to fix. I get stuck worrying about the story being too confusing if I don't explain A, B, and C, but then B won't make sense without D and E, and so on.

I also love the pages I wrote. I don't want to cut them, but I need to. The group saw it right away, but it took me time to accept it. I tried a lot of variations, and I think I have workable plan now. If you care, I added the prolog back in and merged chapter 1 into chapter 2, so the story can start in Antarctica. That lets me get to the inciting incident a chapter sooner. And having the extended prolog as chapter 1 lets me avoid a lot of exposition about what happened during the prolog. I know I'm being vague, but I don't want to spoiler it. You're welcome.

I need to smooth out the new transitions, and then I can read the new opening. I think the story is pretty solid after the inciting incident, which is why I'm spending so long getting the opening right.

In other news, I often play video games when I need a break from the real world and the world of Under the Diamond Moon. This month I've finally taken the plunge into the world of one-on-one fighting games, like Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat. The newsletter title this month is a line from that last game that the announcer yells at you when you're about to wipe out your opponent. It's also what my writing group yelled at me about my original chapter 1. 😄

I'm testing the fighting game waters with demos of Street Fighter 6 and Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising. Granblue has a terrible name, but it's a fun game, and everything is starting to click. If you play fighting games, let me know. I'd love to mash buttons in your general direction.

Stay healthy!
Todd