I wasn't going to do this...I really wasn't.

I'm almost done with my reread of Act Four. When I set out to do this, I wanted to do two things. One was to see how the story read as an actual novel instead of a series of blog posts and it holds up pretty well. Two was to catch various editing errors: grammar, spelling, and places where the text was just awkward and clunky.

I was not doing this to find plot holes or errors in the story. I was not planning to do any major rewrites at all. I was going to let the story stand as is, warts and all. But now I've stumbled onto errors that I feel need addressing, that I can't ignore. And by opening this door, I'm not sure if I'm going to stop.

Error #1 is pretty minor. There's a throwaway line from Solomon somewhere in Act Four where he talks about how surprised everyone was at Mathias' obsession over Deborah. Given that the story up until then does a very good job of establishing what an open secret Mathias' perversions are, that's a pretty glaring error. But correcting it is easy. It's one line. Fix it or remove it and we're done.

Error #2 is not so simple and it's one of the great unanswered questions of VbN. Why does Cranston spare Sarah instead of killing her? This suffers a bit from the same critique I made of Act Two in the first of these posts: something happens because the plot demands it so, not because it's logical or rational. Sarah has to be alive to go to Philadelphia, but she doesn't follow Michael back to Blacksburg. Therefore...Cranston has to "kill" her, but not really. I can live with the fact that this mimics Rebecca's fate in Act Two (She's dead, but she really isn't.) But that had an explanation behind it with The Djinn's scheming. Sarah's removal from the picture does not.

I do have a way to explain this, but it'll require a rewrite of a pivotal scene in PbN Act Two. Since that's still a work in progress, maybe that isn't so bad.

Error #3 is somewhere in the middle. There's a conversation between Deborah and Rebecca and a later internal monologue in Rebecca that is much more negative towards Michael than it should be. It makes Rebecca's later forgiveness and embrace of Michael in PbN somewhat jarring. Those passages should be more ambivalent, written in such a way that makes you wonder how Rebecca will truly react when she meets Michael again. As it stands, you'd expect something completely different than what happens.

So what am I going to do about this? I've got some time this afternoon to work on some of these and it's actually kind of nice that I do have time to dedicate to the story again. I'll probably take advantage and do some rewriting. I know I said I wouldn't, but hopefully I can find a way to remedy this.

The Kindle Re-read Project Part Two

I'm into reading Act Four of VbN by now and I have further observations.

• This is becoming as much an exercise in editing as much as anything. I need to fire my editor, so many errors I'm finding. I said last time that I was surprised at how few spelling and grammar errors I was finding. Not anymore.
• One of the weirder errors is something that must be happening somewhere in the transfer from website to document to PDF. A lot of proper nouns are losing the spaces either before or after. For instance, people are "fromRoanoke" or reading "Game of Throneswhen." It's odd and I'm spending a lot of my new editing energy fixing these.
• I'm really pleased at how well I telegraph future plot developments. My biggest worry as a writer is creating characters that are inconsistent and unrealistic. I have not failed at that here. 
• Michael is very much the sexual predator he self-deludes himself into believing he is not (I've lost count the number of times he deliberately seduces a under-the-age-of-consent minor. No children, but he rides that line as close as he can.) 
• Sarah's jealousy is well-established. 
• Rebecca's fondness for Michael and her willingness to forgive him in PbN is nicely set up. 
• Hell, there's even a throw-away line in the very beginning of VbN Act One that mentions Michael's sister, so her arrival on the scene in PbN Act One isn't as jarring as I thought it would be.
• It's interesting how you can see I shifted my approach mid-stream. VbN Acts Three and Four are really not parts three and four of a single Virginia by Night novel. They're really written as separate 150 or so page novellas. In some ways, the story is presently structured like so...
• VbN Act One & Two = Part One
• VbN Act Three = Part Two
• VbN Act Four = Part Three
• PbN 1999 = Part Four
• The above is really sloppy writing, but again going back through and fixing this problem is really beyond the scope of my time and energy right now. PbN Act Three is huge and between work, family, and Warlords of Draenor I don't have the time I need to dedicate to it. Let alone anything else.