The Gods in Haven: Third Draft Complete

It's done. The delayed third draft of The Gods in Haven is complete at last. Once I got going, it went pretty well.

I last provided an update at the end of part one, which had the biggest changes I was planning in this redraft. That better set up the context for the rest of the novel, and I predicted that the changes for parts two to four would be straightforward, with the main complications coming in the final part five.  Well...

... that's exactly what happened. I got it right for once, and even part five wasn't too bad. Most of the events that happened needed to happen. I just rejigged the order of reveals a little.

I'd made the mistake of saving some major revelations until after the finale. That made aspects a little underwhelming, and made something seem problematic, which really wasn't. So I've added extra scenes beforehand, which sets things up much better, adds to the tension, and simplifies the action during the big showdown. Much better. Dunno why I didn't think of it before.

That did make one of the chapters too long, but I realised it was already in two parts, and they worked better thematically as separate chapters. So the chapter called The God Squad became Family Business and Principal Concern. Gives both parts a much better focus.

So, what's next? Well, it needs one final draft. This one's simpler, just a slow read-through looking for typos, logic errors, and looking in detail at the changes I made in the third draft to make sure I haven't broken anything. The biggest challenge is to not make any unnecessary changes. It's too easy to keep tweaking things indefinitely, and I need to bring this to a close.

I'll not start the final draft for a few days yet. As well as getting a life again after too much focus on the third draft, there's a lot of housekeeping to do to get the book ready to publish after the final draft is complete. The first job on the list of to write a brief afterword. I also want to refresh the burn to make it a bit more in the tone of the book, and then do a test compilation of all the formats and export the cover graphics.

Then will come the legwork of getting the book set up on Amazon and Draft2Digital, so that once I'm ready, it's a simple job to update it with the final draft. The end's finally in sight. I'll report back when the next draft is done.