HS3 - Act 1 Edits
Added 2021-06-29 03:25:14 +0000 UTCI've been talking a lot about editing changes I've been making and considering. I figured I would mention them, now that they've been made or are being made. For reference, Act 1 covers until the Nurevia PoV chapter.
This is creative stuff, so skip it if you're not interested. For whatever reason, every Heretic Spellblade book has been a bit of an editing nightmare. There's a reason I say that the early chapters are WIP.
You won't see these until you get the book (i.e. release or beta reader copy). I'm likely to post edited Act 2 chapters soon, however, as feedback on unedited chapters is less useful at this point.
The changes already made are:
- A new chapter before visiting Aleich that introduces Gharrick Pass and Seraph. This will require changing later chapters.
- Removed the Anna Empress subplot. This greatly simplifies the politics of the series, and allows more focus on characterization. I don't feel it added much, the tension between Anna/Alice can be more interesting if it's character-based rather than political, and it just added unnecessary political complexity.
- Adjusted Alice's scenes in Aleich so that Nathan is the one pushing Alice to take action. He has serious issues with agency in the early parts of the book. I still want the Emperor to be plotting, but Nathan should be pushing Alice to take the throne now that Anna is out of the picture for that.
Changes being considered are:
- Adding extra 'character scenes'. If you read Demon's Throne, these are like the scenes between Rys and Fara. The previous HS books have these, but primarily for Fei. The main one I want to add is something related to the ball.
- Rewriting the reveal scene completely. I'm holding off on this one for another reason.
There is one major edit that will affect the whole book, that I'm uncertain about. Making it will probably make my life very hard, given I delayed the book already and this would be a huge edit.
Namely, whether to stop leaving a bunch of girls behind when going places. Treating all the girls like a JRPG party who are magically able to be with him with no negative consequences solves screentime issues. Cutting Fei and Seraph out of the first third of the book hurts them and the book. The same applies to a lesser degree to the middle of the book for different girls. I can come up with a semi-logical explanation for how they're with him.
There are other solutions for this, but they come down to writing style and what I've found works.
Realistically, I could probably release the book without this much editing. But I like actually refining and improving it.
Also, to clarify, based on feedback on the Patreon chapters, I haven't reduced the size of Aleich mini-arc. But it does need adjusting.
Comments
Agree on the Anna-Alice decision. As for the "bring the whole party", I think it would be difficult to write around having the entire harem be present for everything. Not only would you have to explain why only Nathan's group follows him around while all the other bastion & champions need to guard portals, but with how large the group is, there will either be a situation where each character only has a few lines, the dialogue count per chapter gets overinflated, or there'll only be a couple of characters doing most of the talking with other people falling onto the side. Also, there'll be a need to scale up the enemies that Nathan's group will encounter which may be impractical. For example, if Nathan's entire team was there during the assassination, it would have been a cakewalk unless the attacking forces tripled in power. And this is with Nathan's current group, not counting people like Vera, Nurevia, and who knows how many other women will join him. I think you're better off with Nathan going with rotating group of champions. It can even be phrased in-universe as Nathan wanting to give all champions a mix of experiences which include portal defense and politics. If you do want to go the extra mile to include people, maybe have Nathan develop some sort of long range communication method that allows him to converse with people using his ascended mind magic experience, his mastery of binding stone magic and his meetings with the messengers. Heck, it can even be a similar mind-space to where Nathan meets the messengers so Nathan can talk to his far away champions "face to face" and have other interactions with them. Just throw in some restrictions like it only working with his champions that are near his binding stones when there are no active rifts or ley line disruptions, and it being a complicated spell that takes a long time to cast and you get a spell that's tailor made for involving the entire group in discussions, meetings, and sexy times without being too overpowered. Or just a voice-only mind chat with similar restrictions if you want to have him slowly develop this ability. As for Seraph and Fei getting benched in Act 1, Fei should be fine since she already has a ton of development. As for Seraph, the issue is that you've made her too competent of an administrator/mini-Nathan which is why Nathan is always leaving her behind. Maybe consider Nathan deciding to hire some other administrators/generals to help delegate these duties since the expansion of the territory? I don't see why Seraph has to be the one approving all the hiring, crafting requests, etc. Heck, it can even be put as Nathan using his "future knowledge" to identify competent and trustworthy people in order to oversee that portion of the administration.
Anon_Anon
2021-06-29 18:52:48 +0000 UTCI used JRPGs as an example of the trope (as it's a neutral example, rather than referring to any specific books/authors), not to say that I was interested in moving in that direction overall.
K.D. Robertson
2021-06-29 15:44:03 +0000 UTCI also think that removing the "Anna Empress" thing is for the better. I imagined a lot of complications between Anna and Alice and thus for Nathan if this remains a possibility. Splitting the group at this time in the story makes a whole lot more sense because of the portals, soldier training and so on. Its more reasonable to reduce the splitting later after Nathan gets more of his planned monogem champions and more / better soldiers.
Hugo Kater
2021-06-29 13:22:59 +0000 UTCTaking all the girls doesn't make sense. They'd still be required to do the portal patrols, and honestly if you're aiming to be a JRPG you're writing to a slightly different crowd. I mean you could I guess, but as soon as you do the obligatory beach scene I'm out. There are thousands of light novels out there, and they'll probably all do the JRPG better than you can do the JRPG.
Jeff Ford
2021-06-29 09:45:39 +0000 UTCI like your confirmed changes, Nathan pushing Alice in particular is all sorts of juicy. The considered changes all seem intriguing and keeping the caste all together would be fun, but in all honesty nothing in the first arc would have made me regret buying it as a normal book. Its all been a fun read so far. Thanks for the behind the scenes content! I hope you can find the right balance of changes that doesn't drive you crazy.
Paul Matson
2021-06-29 05:34:20 +0000 UTC
