Keeping with the Beat

You will have noticed that the launch date for the Border Lords Honour have been put back to the end of June.

Why so when all was ready? Cover done, final edits completed and advertising plan in place, but it was not, "good to go."

I was thrilled with the story, language and had the grammar and spelling spot on - but all of this was for naught - the structure.

Hand on heart, I will admit that I let the fundamental foundations of the proper structure for a story get warped by over enthusastic twists and turns of the narrative.

Before the final publish I gave the book a full read through, cover to cover. I was pleased by what i through was great tension between the two main characters. The settings and supporting cast where fully fleshed and providing fuel for subsequent books in the series.

But..... there was something that did not quite gel.

I spun it through Prowritingaid again to see if the dready sticky sentences had clunked up the prose. No, hardly any. Adverbs, very few. Too many speech tags? No. Telling rather than showing? Not that either.

Then the ureka moment - it was the plot structure! the beat was all wrong. There are a plethora of guides and instructions about the structure or essentail componet of a romance plot. However, it seems to all boil down to a 3 act drama, or 4 acts with the half in the middle being divided in two. I had too many acts.

When the final climax was supposed to happen I had two seemingly

insurmountable disasters for the hero and heroine to overcome. It was too much.

So it has been back to the drawing board and wielding a pair of metaphorical scissors.

This has been a bit of a dissapointment, I will admit, but an even greater one would be to release a book you would not enjoy.

There is an old adage - "if it ain't broke, don't try and fix it".

This is very true and as story telling is as old as the hills, it is best to follow the right path, honed over centuries.