Deepening the story

Having finished the first draft of Panthera : Death Plain this week, I wanted to take a break from it and get it out of my head before I started the editing process.

Now I've decided to start submitting my adult SF novels to the mainstream again, I also think it's time I dusted off my YA stories too.  So I'm revising Auroradawn, the young adult novel I nearly sold back in 2005.

The story is told from two viewpoints, so it's much simpler in structure than the Panthera books.  I wrote it around fifteen years ago and originally put both viewpoints into the same chapter.  Now I'm separating them out into their own chapters, which gives me a chance to deepen the story.

Arrien and her brother Baak are both Starriders, from a wealthy Great Family, one of seven that rule the planet Vedrana.  In the original version I hadn't explored how they came to power.  The rewrite had me deciding their ancestor was one of the original colonists, a bioengineer.

At the start of the story Baak has run away from home and exiled himself from his family.  In the original version I'd just hinted at the conflict between him and his father.  Akio is a military man, Baak wants to be an artist, something his father can't accept.  

In deepening the conflict between them I've justified why Baak got hooked into a Fagin-like gang.  This revision has an added bonus.  In the second book Arrien goes looking for clues contained in paintings.  So giving Baak a good knowledge of Vedranan art history will make him the expert for that search.

This deepening of the story is one of the major things I've learned since I first submitted the novel. I now ask more questions about how and why my characters ended up where they are, and why they do and feel as they do.  I've learned to think about the bigger picture when I'm planning the story.  And I do a lot more planning than I used to before I start to write.

Auroradawn is a quest story, based around Arrien discovering runes and clues before the antagonist can.  But my deepening of the story will allow me to show more of the essential natures of Arrien and Baak. And I think my discovery of Arrien's ancestry might well provide some of the antagonist's beliefs and fuel his actions.  Deepening the story has many benefits,