Choreography, darling

I've been reading through what should have been my final edit on my novel Renaissance for the last week or so.  It's turned out to be anything but the last thing I do to it.

I wrote the first draft of the novel, then I discovered that it suffers from my usual plotting problem.  The Supreme Ordeal, which is supposed to be the biggest test the main character faces, occurred too early.  It occurred about twelve chapters from the end, and that wouldn't do.

But putting that test of my main character further back was going to cause big problems with the rest of the storyline.  So what to do?

I did what I've done once before: I added an even bigger test for her while she was still dealing with the first one.  It was time to bring on the pirates and put my main character at risk of dying from their attack.

This worked well, and I'm happy with what I've done.  But it meant going back and re-writing the last twenty chapters of the novel again.  I thought I'd slotted all the changes in well.  Until I got to them in the so-called final read-through,

Then I discovered I'd got characters telling each other about events that I haven't yet shown in the narrative.  Oops!   Time for another rewrite.

At this moment I was reminded of a writer called Shirley Barron.  Shirley was a member of Havant and District Writers' Circle many years ago.  She was an ex actress, and wrote wonderful comedic pieces, often based on the mishaps in her own life.  And with Shirley there were plenty of those.

When someone got their timelines wrong reading out at the Circle Shirley would proclaim "Choreography, darling!"  Her acting training gave her a great sense of when something was in the wrong place in a story.

So I had Shirley's voice in my mind as I tackled the mess I'd made of the end of Renaissance.  It  wasn't really that much of a mess.  It only needed a sentence deleting here, and a couple of paragraphs rewritten there.  And now, having sorted out my choreography, I'm finally happy with the ending.