Immortality Awaits: The Revision
Hopefully, by this point, you’ve read all you need to know about the First Edition of Immortality Awaits.
Even more so, hopefully you’ve read the First Edition. Otherwise, this will contain some pretty massive spoilers if you’re waiting for the revision.
Either way, this is what I’m going to do:
I'll first address the...not necessarily negative but more constructive criticism I've received from the First Edition.
As it is now, in the beginning, Donovan’s plagued by this dream of Isabelle, he doesn’t know how to handle it, he’s hidden it from everyone, blah blah blah.
Fifty pages in they’re already in another world, and most readers are left feeling either confused or rushed, saying there’s no time for them to attach to anyone before they’re thrown into everything.
I guess I took the “get right to the point” advice a little too seriously.
I’ve talked a little before about how I was constantly told that Immortality Awaits was too long, especially in regards to the beginning.
All of those drafts were the days before I went to Lowell, when I was making up for a lack of familiarity with the real setting with an over-abundant amount of character description and backstory.
After I had come back from Lowell, I was able to do a better weaving of the two, but then was, once again, told it was too long.
I then re-wrote the beginning that became the final version, just because it barely fit into the “proper” word count for a first-time author (which is 100,000 words, and Immortality is 106,000.)
I should have known when my best friend and loyal reader since the beginning, Anna, said she liked the other one better because she felt like she had more time to get a better understanding of their characters.
So it’s time to rewrite the beginning, first and foremost, and this is how I’m going to do it:
Instead of Donovan being plagued by a dream of Isabelle, he’s going to dream of the night when Druin got his Power.
Therefore, Druin’s introductory chapter will move to the beginning. Then, when Chapter One opens, instead of Donovan being in the library searching Isabelle for the umpteenth time, it will be the first night he wakes from the dream, and one of his fingers will burn.
Another finger burns for the first ten nights he has the dream, making him think that there’s something deeper going on with why he’s having this dream about some random guy named Druin.
He tells Kaylee from the get-go, as well as everyone else, and we go through the month he spent losing his mind before the beginning of Immortality as it is now.
This does a few things:
It introduces Druin and everyone else as main characters in the beginning, so they don’t just randomly show up halfway through. In this case, all of the main characters can be introduced right away, and the buildup for Druin’s return can be the primary focus of the beginning.
It establishes the connection between Donovan and Druin immediately, and leads to a better reason for him to feel he needs to figure out what the bloody hell is going on, because he feels the burning that Druin goes through as he is swallowed by the volcano each night, and he fears (accurately, in the future) that his own death will be the same.
It makes a better connection between Donovan and Kaylee, more loving and supportive, and gives his friends the ability to watch him go crazy. This time, they're more supportive.
It gets rid of Isabelle in the Prologue. That should be enough. Trust me, no one thinks she's more annoying than I do. So I'm doing everybody a favor here and replacing her with someone I actually like.
After we spend a couple of chapters with Donovan going crazy over the Druin dreams, we have the wedding.
This scene is stark opposite from the original, in that it is Kaylee who is possessed by Isabelle and finds out about the forest where they eventually get whisked off.
This time, there is no book.
After some events being altered a wee bit here and there as far as the discussion on whether or not they should go, we go to Ianaro.
Things will change in there a little bit, but mostly just better world-building revisions, since there’s been further thought on how everything works since I first published it, and for the die-hard fantasy readers, my own lack of knowledge on how things work really translated into the text (when you hear fantasy readers are good, they mean they are good).
It’ll probably take a little bit more time (but not much) to get to Isabelle, just so it’s not like, introduction, rooms, attack, Isabelle, but have a little more time for them to, like, get to know Moridora maybe? Move all that getting to know her stuff to the front instead of the end? Then we can establish the whole Brennedin thing early, because Moridora can tell them, make her more trustworthy (because, series spoiler, we want to trust her) all that kind of stuff.
Isabelle’s story may then become a little different, but also, I hope, a little easier for me to tell, because I won’t have the Prologue to be following it up to, so I can change things around.
At this point, I just have more knowledge of what happened and what will happen in the series itself, so I can build around this a little more now that I know where it’s going. Remember, I only regarded the First Edition as the first book, which it is, but I didn’t consider its place in the entire series, and that is why it needs its revision.
Anyway, after everything with Isabelle is made better, we’ll move into the meeting with Druin, which should still take us around halfway through the book, and then we’ll have Gabrielle and Logan go because Druin is just as aware of his connection with Donovan and already knows he’s close, so they can’t have him knowing he’s there, and their best shot is Logan and Gabrielle.
What happens with Navidia will probably remain the same, because Druin will have been a better person before this Power and it further drives her need to match it, because she’s grown scared of him.
Then, mostly, the revisions will be just general better writing skills I’ve developed while drafting up the second and third book to this series, as well as further world-building that I’ve learned, some extra foreshadowing, some extra things just being able to click here and there a little better, and then that’ll basically be it.
It’ll take me some work on this revision, but I’m excited about how far I’ve come since I published the First Edition, and I’m excited to see how this review turns out.
And we’ll all be able to move on to Tides of Darkness together!
(Sounds easy, right? If you'd like more information on what you could do to help me [at no cost to you, save your time] click here!)
