Reimagining My Novel

I made a very dramatic revision to my novel, and I thought it would be worth explaining my thought process. The main characters for Thieves at the Banquet (for brevity I will refer to as Banquet) were Wyndelyn, the court gastronomer; Helaine, the mushroom forager born on Isle of Morn; Rowlen, a student at the Oakwood academy; Qara, a merfolk mythmaker; and Jyn, a grizzled ship captain. Banquet started with the arrival to the Isle of Morn. Many banquets occurred during the main story, which helped provide the title.

The issue I ran into was that Banquet ran over 700 pages, which is not very publishable for a debut author. So, I began thinking of ways to break the novel in half, but nothing I did worked. So, instead of snapping the book into two, I decided to do something even more drastic: I made the beginning even longer.

That might sound counterintuitive. If the book is already too long at 700 plus pages, then why would I spend time expanding the beginning of the book? Well, I decided that the novel needed to take place earlier in the chronology. Instead of arriving immediately on the Isle of Morn, giving readers very little time to orient themselves in the world before immense change, I wanted to make the first book in the series the journey to the island. A more Odyssey-esque approach. Yes, that meant turning the first section of Banquet into the last section of my new revision. Well, because the banquet scenes were now being pushed to book two, that meant I needed a new name for this book. Coming up with the title is probably a whole blog post in itself, but for brevity, I landed on A Dirge for Windrose (which I will refer to as Dirge).

What changes did I make to the story? Many monumental ones.

First, the main point of view characters changed. Wyndelyn of Oreth has always been my main character since the novel’s first conception. It was originally only going to be her story until I slowly realized that characters like Jyn and Qara enhanced the overall tale. So, I knew Wyndelyn would remain a main character. Her biggest change was a physical one. In my world, folks who are born without a soul are called “aeth.” Rowlen was my only main character who was an aeth in the original draft, but now the sequence was thrown for a loop, Rowlen’s role became unnecessary for the first book. So, it made more sense that one of my main characters should be an aeth since it is such an important aspect of the story. That being said, I came up with an exceptionally compelling story reason to do this, so it all worked out for the better. Wyndelyn now has golden irises (only one at the beginning of the book) and a symbol on her chest and back that looks like a wagon wheel (called an aethmark). She is also an outcast from society, even though she has garnered some celebrity in her youth.

That meant Rowlen got sidelined for Dirge. He would not need to show up now until Banquet. As far as him being a main character, I made the decision to make both Rowlen and Helaine “Interlude Characters.” More on that later. Rowlen’s original purpose was to recount the tales of Wyndelyn’s early life through found letters, but those scenes were trimmed and moved to the present—by Wyndelyn being attacked by illusions of her past. It made the story more in the moment and the past appeared with higher stakes. That significantly changed what I would do in Banquet.

Qara’s biggest modifications was her spellwork. She was originally a maige known as a mythmaker, more like a wizard who could manipulate the world in impossible ways. There was many good reasons to change her magic type, but I will not go into detail here. All I will say is that now she is a shapecarver, someone who can carve sigils into objects to change their properties. For instance, an object that is lightweight could temporarily increase in weight by applying this kind of magic. This changed her fighting styles and philosophies in the book, but it all worked out for the better. It made her more of a scavenger character, tinkering with many different objects in the world.

Jyn probably had the most monumental changes. Originally, Jyn was an old sailor from Aildros who mostly grew in the form of work ethic. He wasn’t my most compelling character, so I decided to do something quite extreme. In Wyndelyn’s past, her village was destroyed by a northern army manned by a man named Ras Tiran. He forced her mother to farm for the invaders and took Wyndelyn as an insurance policy, forcing her to help feed the army. Ras has a daughter who is traveling with him, Aliana, and Wyndelyn and Aliana eventually bury their differences and become close friends. These matters are complicated as their tale goes on, but Jyn at one point tried to help them escape the army.

The changes I made to Jyn now is that he is the son of Ras Tiran, and that trying to help Wyndelyn escape the army made him wash out of the navy and be a disgrace to his family. This change also made Jyn very religious, a devout follower of Maelstrom. A big part of the faith is that a maige may not live, and this further complicates things with his family falling into the paths of becoming maigen. He has a lot of internal struggles with the fact that magic enhances his life, but by his faith, he should shun it. This change honestly makes Jyn one of the most compelling characters in the novel, and it made him even more connected to Wyndelyn.

I was tempted to leave the book with three POV characters: Wyndelyn, Qara, and Jyn, but as the story went on, I felt like there was a dynamic that was seriously missing—the archetype of the rogue. Rogue characters have been a major staple in fantasy and science fiction forever, and they are some of my favorite types of characters to see. That’s when I created the character: Valee. He’s a bit of a heel and backstabber, often probably being an infuriating addition to the main cast. But there is something intoxicating about a character who is not very likeable. It gives me a lot of room to either make him more or less likeable through character growth, and that is very exciting. So, the POV characters for Dirge became Wyndelyn, Qara, Jyn, and Valee.

This leads me to the “Interlude Characters.” At the time of making the major revision, I was re-reading The Stormlight Archive for the second time. In that book, the story rotates around the main characters with interludes between each act—allowing the author to inject perspectives from other parts of the world. First off, this gave me a chance to really develop Pyra as a character as she shows up now at almost every interlude. It also allowed me to introduce Helaine to the story since she, like Rowlen, would not be wholly necessary until Banquet. Helaine is such an important character to me that I felt it completely justified to have her show up as an interlude. There is also a gravewatcher (a monster hunter) who gets a really fun chapter.

With monumental changes to all the POV characters, it altered so many details from what used to be Banquet that at times it felt like a brand-new story. I still felt that I held on to the heart of what made me love Banquet in the first place. I am looking forward to continuing this new style of story in a new revision of Banquet. In the meantime, I have sent Dirge out to four literary agents (with two rejections already). The process keeps going.