I am in the last chapters of the last major edit of my first novel, Augment.  (Yay!  Woooo!!!)  There are 5000 words left.  I was planning to be done two days ago.  No suck luck….

While the remaining chapters are technically well written, they don’t ‘feel’ right.  They’ve been through an editor.  They’ve been through a beta reader.  And yet no one has commented on the intangible quality of feel.

My goal when I write is always to generate a reader experience.  It is not enough to me to share a story of things that happen, and it is not enough to share the emotions and turmoils of a character in a story.  I want to make my reader feel.

I can always tell the difference a great book from a mediocre one by the way my heart races, my palms sweat, my breath catches.  Books that I can’t put down are the books that make me feel.  I have no choice but to get caught in the ebb and flow of the story.

There are two tools I like to use in my own writing to help me generate feeling.  The first is pacing — alternating slow ‘breather’ scenes with fast ‘heart-rate spiking’ action scenes.  The other is strategic cutting and manipulation of scenes.

Let me tell you more about my story and my current conundrum.  The climax of the rough draft sees the main character fall into a deadly situation.  The next scene features someone coming up with a plan.  So does the next scene.  The scene after that shows the main character still in her unfortunate situation.  Then the supporting heroes enact their plan.  The main character has her inner-plot resolution, realizing she can help herself.  There’s an epilogue, and it all resolves.  Very exciting.

I appreciate there are no specifics here, but I hope you can see the difference when I tell you the non-specific changes I need to make.

The climax scene is great.  Very tense.  9/10 on the heart-stress indicator.

The original scenes of people coming up with plans are, again, technically good.  The grammar is in the right place.  Characters are acting in accordance with their established behaviours.  The scenes are choreographed well so there’s no confusion.  Some minor plots are wrapping up.  The problem is I’ve gone from a 9/10 to a 3/10.

As a reader, my interest levels crashed.  Ka-blammo.  Because even though the next scenes have people arguing and stressing about how they’re going to do the next things they have to do, their struggles are luke warm in comparison.  And, spoiler alert, they manage to come up with a plan to save the main character after only a couple hundred words.  So it feels like “Omg, she’s in a crisis situation and I don’t know if she’ll live” suddenly turns into “Oh yeah, they’ll save her.  No sweat.”  Cue setting down the book and going to sleep.

Instead, I altered my scene structure so that basically the same series of events happens.  But with one key difference: The first planning scene ends half-way.  They stress about how to rescue her, listing off the reasons they can’t (I also expanded some of the reasons they can’t, a la Show Don’t Tell rule).  Cut to the next scene, where another group is planning a different aspect of the rescue — also stop this scene halfway through when all seems really, really lost.  The pacing is also relatively fast, even though they are not action scenes.

I also worked these scenes a little bit more to really focus around the previous 9/10 scene, really trying to drive home the risk of failure.  This has a building effect, so that the first (half) planning scene take the heart-stress level to a 9 1/4, and the next (half) planning scene cranks it up to a 9 1/2.

Wow.  Be still my galloping heart.

Next, I go back to the following scene of the main character, where she is struggling in  mortal peril and struggling with herself on an emotional level (can I, can’t I help myself).  The stress here is different.  And the pacing is slower, showcasing her internal turmoil.  The scene feels like a mere 6-7 out of 10 on the anxiety scale, but the extra time and attention to emotion really draws the reader in.

Back to the other group, who is still planning (and freaking out because it seems nothing is going to work out).  The pacing on these is moderate, allowing me to wrap up some minor plots to make way for the big ending, but there is still an undertone of anxiety because we, the readers, have been reminded several times about the stakes and the pitfalls.

I feel the biggest difference to these scenes was actually the scenes in front.  With the new edits, the crescendo of anxiety is more prolonged, which lets our brains really absorb what is happening and hold onto that feeling of “I gotta know what happens next” longer.  The fast up and fast down is too jarring.  When I have read books like this, I often feel frustrated, or like that stressful scene was a weird joke.

After this, we go to the main character rescuing herself, in a 10/10 action scene that also combines 10/10 emotional release.  Everything is awesome.  Brief epilogue so ease the readers out.  The End.

The best part is this strategic restructuring and repacing only took a few hours to sort out.  And I am 10/10 satisfied with the ending.  It really had the ‘feel’ I wanted.

I also think it’s cool to be able to look back at a novel I thought was pretty great a few short months ago and find such dramatic ways to improve it.  Proof that we are always learning.  And maybe some reassurance that I actually am learning, instead of just slogging away at this keyboard.