Smoothing the narrative - linking up the action

This week I've reached the end of my rewrite of Auroradawn. The final scenes in the book involve an attack on Mithras, Arrien's Great Family ancestral stately home.  I have two narrative threads running through this scene, Arrien's and Baak's.

The first viewpoint is Baak's.  Arrien's brother Is piloting a flyer, and he's part of a Starrider security patrol.  They've been sent up to defend the stately home from a squad of hostile aircraft.  His storyline follows the dogfight, his flyer being hit, and his emergency landing.

The second narrative thread is an attack on the house itself, which takes place shortly after Baak's landing scene, and this is in Arrien's viewpoint.  Another group of hostiles blast a hole in the house wall, and try to force their way inside.  Arrien and her Uncle Zivon go with the defenders to stop the intruders getting into the house.

In my first try at the scene I realised I had a big hole in that narrative.  I'd left Arrien firing at an attacker to save her Uncle's life.  It's a good cliffhanger, but then I'd cut to Baak's viewpoint and the other storyline.  The problem was that when I returned to Arrien's viewpoint, I didn't finish off that scene.  In my head I knew what had happened, but I hadn't bothered to tell the reader.  Oops!

But having added a section explaining what happened, my timelines in Arrien's and Baak's chapters were then askew.  Baak's chapter includes not only his recovery from the landing, but also what he did in the next month.  Which meant that when I switched back to Arrien's viewpoint, still in the middle of the fight, it didn't work.

The answer was to re-work the last two chapters.  Instead of switching to Bbak's viewpoint, I leave Arrien's cliffhanger as it was, but then go on to her next chapter.  That allows me to resolve the attack before I switch to Baak's scene and go on to the future.

That decision meant a bit of re-writing of both chapters, but now at least the timelines are preserved in the narrative.  It was an interesting editing challenge, but one I enjoyed getting to grips with.

I'll find out soon whether anyone else likes my changes when the book goes out on submission.  Wish me luck.