The Impossible Takes a Little Longer

So it’s finally time to start work on rewriting The Impossible Takes a Little Longer, using what I heard at last month’s critique session. Going over the notes again, I’ve roughly grouped the problems into different categories (slightly different from the way I grouped them at the link):
•Style. This includes, for example, my tendency to do paragraphs of QUOTE other character’s reaction REST OF QUOTE which leads to confusion and spoils the impact of the quote (it still looks good to me, but I’ve heard the criticism too many times to doubt it).
Another style problem: The number of significant characters who have multiple identities of some sort or another got overly confusing. This one’s simple enough to solve, since I can dispense with several costumed identities (and I should probably emphasize how utterly insane the degree of illusion is in KC’s life).
A third: Excess use of swear words (and they’re actually cut back from earlier drafts).
I also need to clarify a few points, for example that Superman is just a comic-book character in my world (again, something I thought I’d fixed from a previous draft). And the history of the Comanches in my timeline.
•Substance.
According to one review, two of my supporting characters, Rachel and Sarah, are too much alike.
The ending apparently needs work. Too many jumps in setting. Too much confusion. Too much going on. The gain in power KC gets at the climax comes too easily. And her solution to the world’s ills is a little oppressive (that’s the result of my explaining it poorly) and she wins everyone over to help her too quickly, without good enough argument.
The biggest challenge will be my villain’s motivation. As TYG put it, he comes off completely insane, but he appears rational—not in the sense that he’s hiding it, in the sense he’s inconsistently drawn. Nobody likes his reasons for destroying KC as I’ve presented them.
I like the reasons, but I think they have a point. His fixation on her just isn’t plausible … so do I find stronger motivations and keep the actions the same? Change his actions? Or recast completely? Needless to say, the less structural change I have to make, the better, but I may have to make some.
(On the plus side, nobody objected to how I handled the romance, which has some twists I wasn’t entirely sure worked. So that’s cool.)
My immediate goal, then, is to recreate Cal Moran, my adversary, so that he works. Everything else I can adjust as I write but he plays too large a role not to figure out first.
Wish me luck ..