Remapping
I've picked up Portal 3 again. The manuscript stands at roughly 85,000 words and is close to the first draft being finished, I suspect around the 100k word mark before I go back over it and fill the gaps, plug the holes and do that first round of editing that makes it readable. The timeline and continuity is a complete and utter mess, disjointed and jumping all over the place with little or no explanation. There are pages and pages of dialogue with no authorial voice to fill in the thoughts and motivations of the characters, or to describe where they are or what they're doing.
So, I'm going over it from page 1, with a spreadsheet for characters in order of appearance, key events in chronological order and other notes that I need to pick up. I'm putting in notes to myself to fill holes and offer more detail, more explanations, pad it and make it work. I'm remapping the whole thing.
But this is, probably, the last book to feature Kate, Lily and Sam and it's been hard to finally let them go. So, it needs to work.
Before you all start shouting at me, they all have children, the portals and the magic still exist and you never know….
