Hello, all!

There’s a great little quote that pops up on the AuthorSalon.com website from time to time. It reads “There are no great writers, just great re-writers.” I am very focused right now on becoming the latter! Now that I have a healthy pause between graduate school classes on my hands, I am spending a lot more time re-shaping THE PROVING into the story that I hope it was meant to be. Here are some of the highlights of the revised plot, again based on input from readers and professional editors:

1) Most importantly, the core story arc of The Tome of Greystone remains intact. The style and shape of the presentation is being re-wrapped around the same main points.

2) The number of point-of-view characters is being reduced. All of the same main characters will still be in the story, but the action will be told from the viewpoint of Argand, Kosin, My, and Darian for the protagonists, and King Balon, Pinneron, Julian, and Lucian for the antagonists.

3) The action is being condensed considerably, so that The Proving event itself happens just past the middle of a 100k word or so book. As a result, the training of the good guys (the Elect of the Silver Phoenix) and the introduction of Julian and the Blood Knights as bad guys (the Elect of the Red Phoenix) will all happen much sooner than before.

4) Princess Darian’s role in the story is increasing, as is the Bard My’s. Due to the change in points-of-view, the roles of most of the other male characters (besides Argand) are reduced slightly.

5) The threat that the protagonists are facing due to the public’s distrust of magic is being strengthened. For the past twenty years or so, royal and local authorities in Greystone have been tracking down “Emergents”, people who begin to display inexplicable, magical powers (remember, magic doesn’t exist in the modern Land except in old Bard’s Tales).   Emergents are considered a dangerous threat to society since the vast majority of them go murderously insane within months of the emergence of their powers.

The good news is that re-writing like this is a MUCH faster process than the original writing effort. The bad news is that the changes are significant and need to be pulled off without sacrificing the flow and pacing of the story!

That’s it for now! Let me know if you have any thoughts or questions on these changes, and stay tuned for lots more posts  and updated over the next four weeks of intensive re-writing.

~Kevin