Justicar Jhee and the Spectral Armada
A Justicar Jhee Mystery
A Justicar Jhee Mystery
Overall, it’s been a slow week. After a few days ruminating, I embarked on the next story breakdown phase on my urban fantasy Parahuman. The analysis and break down of what went wrong with this story is a grueling, laborious process. It’s full of fits and starts. I alternate between ‘ah, eureka!’ and ‘what the heck was I thinking here?’
My alpha reader has just about forged their way through to the end of the draft. While I’ve identified some challenges I need to work on, a few subtle things I tried came across about as I wanted. A lot of the challenges were things I already knew or suspected were confusing or light on substance. I have to beef up some things I meant to be obvious and add more connective tissue.
Also, atmosphere, atmosphere. I have to crank up the moody, creepy feel of the location by a lot. As of right now, it comes across as too matter of fact. Because of that, some scenes fell flat.
However, I completely missed making the characters voices distinct enough. Although, the story is still in a pretty raw form, character voices have always been a weak spot for me. It’s something I usually never notice until pointed out by others. So I likely wouldn’t have caught it, even if the story was in a more finished form.
I want to do another pass so the draft reads cleaner. Namely, integrate a lot of disconnected bits into their respective scenes. A few of the investigation scenes need to be sped up and re-ordered to be more coherent and less contradictory.
Who were you again?
House of Who, now?
Have a lovely day!