Triptych Third Draft: Tomlin's Story Complete

It took a few days to get back into the world of Pantheon after my excursion into the Priory, but I've now completed reworking Tomlin's story after feedback. Phew.

I decided to start with Tomlin as the only significant changes to his thread were towards its end, whereas the opposite is true for Katsu. It certainly made it easier to get back into the story.

The early changes were mainly wording improvements, motivational fixes, and clarifying the ambiguous impression I'd given of the continent of Temani. Things got a little more complicated when Steffan joined in, and much worse once Ona became central.

This phase suffered from being written before I'd fully got into Steffan's and Ona's heads in their chapters. Their behaviour was out of character, and I'd accidentally given a terrible impression of Ona, even though she had good reasons for behaving that way in her head. To fix that, I rewrote the first half of the final chapter completely. Much better.

Katsu's thread is next for rework. The biggest changes will be in his opening chapter, where I front-loaded too much exposition. I know how to fix that now, starting his story at the end of the journey to meet the Director, rather than the start. That gives me natural places to reveal things organically in the action.

I made one other structural change. I've now split the story into two parts:

Part 1: The Triptych. This contains the three separate story threads of my protagonists up to their meeting.

Part 2: The Troika. This much shorter section contains the chapters when they're together.

Some of the action previously in Steffan's earlier chapters will move into the second part now, where it will give the story time to breathe before the finale.

I've already made a start on restructuring Steffan's tale, where the bulk of the rework will happen. I've split the chapters into multiple smaller scenes and sorted them into three categories: Flashbacks, Current Events, and Framing. That will help me when the time comes.

The framing is where most changes will occur. Many scenes will remain in the same places, although some will shift by a chapter or two. A couple will be deleted completely. A few will also move into part two, and I'll be writing at least one new scene, possibly two.

I'm looking forward to that jigsaw puzzle! First, I have to address the more minor issues in Katsu's thread. I've already renamed him to Katsu Sumara, to avoid the accidental initial embarrassment of him being Katsu Kuzara from Kitara. Oops...

I'll report back once that's done.