Hello, dreamers. As the month of May continues, work continues apace on my primary project at the moment: remaking The Ursa Frontier prior to my next round of queries.

As I mentioned in this week’s “Writer’s Desk”, I’ve effectively reached the end of one phase of this project and entered another. At this point, I’m confident I’ve made all the minor tweaks and expansions I can or need to in this story. That means the rest of the real estate I’ve opened up must be filled by new material. And that means I need to decide exactly where I’m going with this, and where it needs to end.

Where Next?

After taking a few days away from the project and reviewing my notes, I’ve come to realize there are several areas I need to focus my efforts on. I want to expand the portion of the story where Rand and Nina are alone, hiking to the final outpost site. And I’m looking to revise the ending. Those are the areas where I’ll be adding new chapters.

The ending, however, is really where I’m focusing right now. Because frankly, it’s something I hadn’t considered until the past few days.

As frequent readers will know, The Ursa Frontier and its largely-completed second installment were originally written as a single novel. I have a formula when I write a novel: I like to start out fast, build the bulk of the plot into the middle, have a slow-forming climax that spans multiple chapters (typically with at least one fake-out), and finish the story fast. Typically, the conclusion lasts only four or five chapters, which are packed with action and usually see the main characters split up.

Well, having split this novel in two, I’m now no longer working with the first two parts of a novel; I’m working on a complete story. And while that story already has a climax, I’m no longer satisfied with the conclusion.

I need to wrap this story up in a way that not only leads seamlessly into the next, but also allows it to stand on its own. And as I see it, there are two ways to do that. One is to write one or two completely new chapters, which will require me to heavily revise the opening chapters of the next novel to account for continuity. The other, much simpler solution is to simply change where this particular story ends.

So, at the moment, I’m looking at what are currently the first several chapters of the next book. This is still in the early stages, but at present I’m confident I can expand those chapters to add everything I need to wrap up unresolved plot lines, and bring everything to a close with a satisfying bang. Now, instead of ending the story just prior to the Susan Constant arriving in orbit, I intend to end the story with planetfall: the landing of the first prefabricated structures that will become the colony.

This will change a lot. As it stands currently, the second half of the original novel is even shorter than the first (which surprised me, somehow). Taking several more chapters away will make it even shorter. But of all the planned material I cut during editing to arrive at a more palatable word count, the vast majority of it was meant for the second half. That portion of the book deals with the process of forming the colony, getting things up and running, with the colonists both settling into their new world and learning about its many dangers. Despite the sheer amount of the original draft devoted to that portion, it still always felt rushed.

Now, by doing this, I’ll be giving my self a lot more room to breathe. I can focus more on showing this new civilization forming, the colonists adapting to life on a new planet and being effectively cut off from Earth.

And damn does that sound exciting. – MK