Scouring Juventas: Part 4 Complete

Well, part 4 of Scouring Juventas went as quickly as I hoped. It was always intended to be a short one, and as I approach the end, I always build up a head of steam. However, just because there were only three chapters, it didn't mean I couldn't change my plans completely.

As I started writing, I realised it was the first time that we meet an important character face-to-face. He's always been an ongoing presence, but usually only seen on the news channel, or coming up in conversations with others. I decided his physical introduction needed to take a little more time.

So I split the first chapter into two separate ones, which flowed much better. However, I hadn't finished fiddling. I ended up merging my original two final chapters into a single, more focused one, which sets things up nicely for the finale. This is how part 4 ended up:

When I gave the overall structure for the novel in my last post, I'd started numbering the Duties, but I did say I might change my mind before this one. Well, I did. However, I also decided that the number were more important than the names, so we now have:

• Tertiary Duty

• Part 1: The Outage

• Quaternary Dury, Phase 1

• Part 2: The Election

• Quaternary Dury, Phase 2

• Part 3: The Discovery

• Secondary Duty

• Part 4: The Reunion

• Quaternary Dury, Phase 3

• Part 5: The Shadow

• Supplementary Duty

You'll notice that part 5 has now been renamed to the more ominous The Shadow. Mwahaha.

The more observant amongst you will be asking the question, where's the Primary Duty gone? You know, the one that used to be The Scouring. After all, that's what the novel is called.

Well, it's now a chapter in part 5:

It shows how much I fundamentally changed how I was telling the story during its writing. The chapter I originally wrote as the prelude has ended up as part of the finale! The story is still the same. I changed my mind about which bits the reader would get as context and which would be saved for the big reveal. Much better this way.

Part 4 came in at just under 11,000 words, putting me around 87,000 words, with an eventual target of around 97,000 words. There's a good chance I might add one more chapter in part 5 – it depends how long they take to eat the trifle (don't ask).

No cover image this time – I'm saving my expected final version for the end of the first draft. You may have seen people sharing pictures generated by the Wombo Dream app on social media. I thought I'd give it a go, and this is what it made for Scouring Juventas. It's not a bad effort for what I imagined the surface of Juventas would look like from space.

Right, here we go. Part 5 beckons...