A new year, a new draft of The General's Son...

So, I was waffling all about my latest book, Magic Breakers in my last blog post.  I've not abandoned it, I'm currently ploughing through the first round of editing, slowly.  Life, Army stuff, Christmas and DIY just got in the way (quite a lot) recently.

Anyway, you've probably noticed that the picture above features the cover of The General's Son, with a big 'V2' slapped on its front.  "Why is this?" I hear you ask.  Well, quite simply because concurrently to working on the editing of Magic Breakers, I'm also working on a second version of The General's Son, the first novel I published.

I published this novel in March 2023, and at the time I released it, I thought it was as good as it could be.  I was wrong.  It has flaws, primarily in the early chapters. 

Why has it taken so long to spot this?  It's an interesting question.  Loads of people have read The General's Son and I've had plenty of positive reviews from those who've finished it.  However, when I look at my Kindle Unlimited stats I notice something - my read through isn't great.  It looks like around half the people who read The General's Son don't read the sequel; yet most of those who read book 2 go on to read book 3.  I have a suspicion I'm losing readers early on - those who stick with it enjoy it and forget the early chapters, but for many, it ends up in the 'did not finish' pile.

It's easy to be blind to your own work, it's easy for readers who finish a book to forget a poor start.  Sometimes it takes a second pair of rather critical eyes to spot some major flaws in your structure.

Twitter has been one of my few success stories, in terms of follower numbers at least.  On last check I was on 26.7 thousand, in September 2022 I had just 1 follower - my husband.  It's also allowed me to connect with a host of interesting and in some cases, very helpful people.  Peter, from Snowdon Publishing Services is one of these people.  He pointed out my first chapter stank and when he explained why, I was inclined to agree.  He helped me see my novel in a whole new light, it was like my blinkers were ripped off in respect to my story and I was able to look at it a whole lot more objectively.

I now realise I have tried to plug too much back-story into the start of the book.  I know why I did this, but I won't bore you with the details.  It's not the first time I've done this either.  You'd think I'd have learned!

The first stage in moving towards improvement is identifying where you went wrong.  I think I've done this, so now it's time to make The General's Son better.

How?

Like this:

Don't start with Aran!  Aran is my antagonist.  I always battled with thoughts of whether or not I should start with his story.  It turns out my instincts were right.  It was a bad idea.  Garrad is my protagonist, I have a nice second chapter which features him.  I'm going to start with Garrad - almost.

I think I need a prologue first.

Not a prologue!  Everyone hates prologues!

Um, I've done quite a bit of reading on the subject of prologues and it's certainly true that some people hate them.  I've never really been a fan myself.  But I've managed to convince myself that they can work, if appropriate and kept short.  

I'm axing chapter 1 from Version 1 of The General's Son.  But the thing is, there was some key info in there that the reader still needs to know.  I think my new prologue covers this.  I'm axing another four chapters after my protagonist is introduced too - I'll be adding details into some later chapters where perhaps some key detail may now be lacking.  The long and the short of it is, I'm chopping back-story and getting to the meat of my tale more quickly.  In doing so, I hope I'll hook more readers for longer.  Let's see if it works...

Curious what my draft prologue looks like?  I've copied it below:

​Love it? Hate it? Think it needs work? Post your comments below or email me at [email protected] with your thoughts!

Many thanks.