When I come back to a book I’ve been working on but had to set aside while I queried and did other tasks, I usually get a pleasant surprise.
That is, I can see how it can be better, but I’m also pleased with what I come back to. I build up fears while I’m away from it, and doubt that it’s any good at all. Then I read it and phew! it’s definitely a strong base to build on.
Not Harris in Exile, though. At the micro-level, scene by scene, the action and dialogue are clear and credible and character motivations are clear. So that’s good.
But at the moment, one of the great climaxes, full of danger and comedy, ending in bathos, occurs at the mid-point in the book. Reading, you get the sense that the novel came too quickly, then took a while to recover, that is, hook the reader into the novel’s other story.
I need to have a build-up of tension throughout the novel, and have both major climaxes close together, like fireworks at the end of a show. There should be a micro-climax at about the halfway point, but there shouldn’t be a sense that the plot stops for it.
I don’t have that micro-climax yet, but it will have the male MC and one of the female MCs in some sort of jeopardy which, with ingenuity, they will escape. And get on without stopping or resting.
At the moment I’m moving scenes around, to give me a better constructed historical thriller.
