Fractal War: Third Draft Underway

I wasn't planning another blog post this quickly after the last, but as soon as I made the previous post on completing the third draft of Fractal Peace, I received the feedback I needed on Fractal War.

I always suspected Fractal War would need more changes. It's told from five different perspectives with a complex story to sort out the mess left over from how the war had ended. There were several areas I was wary of, but I didn't want to rush in with fixes that addressed the wrong issues. I needed an external opinion.

After receiving my son's thoughts and having a great chat with him about it yesterday, I can see the route ahead. On the whole, much was as I expected, plus a few things that were blindingly obvious in retrospect but I hadn't considered.

Several character arcs did the characters a disservice. In particular, Amina Ya's arc needs a little work. A couple of extra scenes will fix that. The ending of Novak's tale was mishandled, with insufficient justification for her being where she was. Luckily, there's a fix for that that resolves another anomaly. In general, I've already made notes for all the significant areas of work needed.

I'm very encouraged by this. As well as more minor fixes, I've a few new scenes to write and a little restructuring to do at the end to make it work more satisfyingly. I wrote Onga's and Polk's endings serially, but they'd work much better as interleaved scenes in parallel. There's some choreography to improve in the final stages that I'm unsure how to do yet, but it will come as I get closer. I'm not worried about that,

The biggest concern was one I was worried about – there's a historical narrative that's important to the resolution but is left dangling at the end, leaving the story feeling incomplete. It was a thread I intended to pick up in the sequel, Fractal Legacy, but it made me realise a big mistake: this isn't a duology. With very little surgery, it works much better as a trilogy:

Fractal Peace: a murder in the aftermath of the war uncovers a major threat to the peace process

Fractal War: sorting out the mess arising from how the war ended uncovers a danger from the depths of history

Fractal Legacy: the embers of conflict that caused Fractal Space to be built ignite

It's another realisation that made so much sense when I made it that I wondered why I hadn't thought of it earlier. Oh well, I got there in the end.

First, I must complete the third draft of Fractal War (with a few minor tweaks to Fractal Peace to accommodate). That's likely to take a couple of months. Then, I'd better crack on with Fractal Legacy.

I haven't finally decided on my release strategy for the Fractal Space trilogy (the first time I've used that phrase), and I won't until I've finished Fractal War. My gut feeling is that I'll wait until Fractal Legacy is ready and release them all in one go, likely towards the end of 2024. The other option is to release them about six months apart over the next year. I'll see.

Right. Time to complete Fractal War. I'm looking forward to this.