Belly of the Beast

The finale of Son of Science Novel has a lot going on. There’s physical peril, and emotional stakes, and a lot of difficult moments for all of the characters. The reader gets to witness the action through the eyes of both the good guys and the bad guys. It’s quite spectacular, if we do say so ourselves.

As part of our quest to streamline things where we can, and make the novel the best it can be, we started to wonder if maybe a certain side-thread through the ending was maybe superfluous (well, Kent did anyway). We spread the scene out on the exam table and took a close look, and we found many items in favor of keeping it.

Its setting — we’ll call it the Elephant Graveyard — is threaded throughout the novel, and comes up again in Book 3, so giving it a job in the climax feels right. The characters that go off to the elephant graveyard need to have jobs to do, and this fits well with their skillset. If we remove their side quest we need to find a different way for them to contribute to the action, and that would mean replotting the whole ending. And we’re really, really happy with the other parts of the ending. Like, seriously thrilled. But must important is that the elephant graveyard gives the characters a really nice moment, and puts a nice bow on the arc that one of them has traveled through the novel. Plus it sets them both up nicely for the third book. So the thread is definitely staying.

But the fact that we, as the authors, had doubts, means it’s not as strong as it should be. We need to do a better job of sketching that character’s arc so that when the reader gets to this part they can’t look away.