Do the shuffle - keeping information in the right order

The thing with re-writing a book you wrote years ago is that you get half-way through the text and realise that some information is in the wrong order.

I've done just that with my re-write of Auroradawn this week.  The story is a quest tale, which sends my main character Arrien around the planet, following a trail of clues.  Solving the first one gives her the location of the second object.  Solving the second riddle gives her the location of the third, and so on.  The seven clues gave me the seven major locations of the story.

In my original version of the book, Arrien's brother Baak ran away from home two years ago and isn't part of the story.  In my re-write, I've added Baak's point of view.  And this is where I needed to start shuffling information around.  Most of Baak's story happens in different places from Arrien's, but in the middle of the book, and at the end, they meet face to face.  And that required me moving information and timelines around to get them both in the same place at the same time.  

Compared to my later books, the task was relatively easy.  I do only have two viewpoints, after all.  In the Panthera books I have four, and five.  In the book I've recently finished, Genehunter, I have four viewpoints.  But the difference between these and Auroradawn is that I knew I was going to have that structure before I started writing, so I planned the chapters out in detail.  

I didn't do that when I wrote Auroradawn.  I let the riddles guide the structure of the book, and wrote around that information.  Which is how I've ended up having to shuffle information around.  In chapter 26 I have a description of the carvings on the heavy wooden front doors of Mithras, Arrien's home.  Which is fine, except that it should have occurred much earlier.

In chapter 15 Arrien is leading a mourning party for her mother out of the front doors of the house.  So that's the obvious place to describe them and their elaborate carvings.  But in the original version I hadn't done this. I suspect that I didn't invent those details until I was writing chapter 26.

But that's part of what editing is about.  We have to spot inconsistencies like this and shuffle things  around into their rightful places.  And I suspect I'll find a few more things to shuffle around before I've finished the rewrite.