Revising, finishing, all that jazz

A Straight Cut's third act draws from this awesome book

So I finished plotting A Straight Cut, which actually involved completely reworking the third act. My main issue with the novel currently (and will need to be fixed in an edit before going out to Alphas) is the lack of direction for the first 2/3rds of the novel. While it's been fun to have characters interact and putter around in the world I've made, the underlying plot has been shrouded in secrecy, making it boring. Luckily Act 3 will ramp things up a bit, but it really needs a stronger first two acts in order for the third act to both make sense and actually be meaningful. 

Which means heavy editing, but we aren't worrying about that now. Now I just need to finish this dumb thing.

In other news, I restructured how Death's Aria will play out, which mostly involved moving key scenes to make the final confrontation stronger and more significant. The biggest complaint from Alphas was that the ending confrontation felt weak. Generally the results of it were fine, but the actual scene itself and the events leading up to it were stagnating after such a strong second act. I've relocated one of the strong second act scenes (clever readers might guess what I'm referring to) towards the end of the book, making the final conflict much more character driven. This also allows me to further develop the characters up to that point and fix lots of the third act's pacing issues, which will be good.

The other major change is Aria's character. While many readers felt they warmed up to her by the end, others were so disgusted with her at first they couldn't get over that initial first impression and despised her throughout. I'm reworking her so that she is more likeable at the beginning but still seriously flawed, which makes her less of a jerk who has a social problem and more of someone trying to do better...who has social problems. This shouldn't change the character enough to break my initial idea, but I think it will make her much more sympathetic. 

All this is going to require a hefty amount of editing, so I'm hoping to burn through A Straight Cut quickly so that I can move on to Death's Aria and start submitting. We'll see!

I'm also mad that I scheduled the GRE over CONduit without knowing it, and they think it's acceptable to charge freaking $50 to reschedule. Seriously? For a test I'm taking on a computer that probably is proctored by one person you aren't paying enough for? Besides, we all know you just have a pool of these SAT questions you draw from to make tests. How much could it possibly cost? Monopoly at its finest. 

Anyway, that's it from me. I have a review of a friend's album coming up within the next little bit, so keep an eye out for that!