Tag Archives: Let No Man Put Asunder: Third Draft

October 7, 2026 · 5:19 am

The arc of the book tends towards flatness …

Part of looking at the plot of Let No Man Put Asunder last week was studying the key turning points: the opening, the beginning of the trouble shortly afterwards, the intensifying danger, the point where things turn around and they push back.

I’m not sure I have any of that. Which is not good.

In Southern Discomfort, Maria’s plight ratchets up as the book progresses. At first she’s stuck humoring the grief-stricken Olwen McAlister until she can split town. Then Aubric McAlister’s killer threatens her with death unless she leaves sooner than that. Then she finds she can’t leave. Then the FBI — well, suffice to say, things get even worse after that.

The same is true for the other characters. Joan Slattery finds herself undergoing changes she can’t explain, then the killer kidnaps her late in the book. The FBI agents discover they’re not working any sort of normal case. The town of Pharisee has to deal with plagues and supernatural forces. It builds and builds … damn, just writing that makes me feel pleased with my work.

The previous version of Asunder had less of a build — maybe that’s one reason it never sold — but it does have some. As Neil and Adrienne travel across the multiverse, they’re repeatedly attacked, narrowly escape, with the attacks increasing in power every time. They survive because they have allies but their allies are only enough help to keep things going, not to save the day. Finally, at the climax, they confront the nameless Big Bad and have it out with them.

The second draft does not have that. Things get weirder and freakier as the story progresses but the threat remains largely constant until about four fifths of the way through, when things ramp up. Obviously I need to be putting the screws to Paul and Mandy much more effectively.

Part of the problem is that it’s set in our world in 1976 rather than the multiverse, which limits the range of what threats I can throw at them. Part of it, as I mentioned before, is the big cast. And that my protagonists spend a lot of time talking with the supporting cast and a lot of it recycles what’s already been said: Mandy and Paul want to go it alone because this is too dangerous for anyone else. It ain’t working.

As they say, diagnosing the problem is the first step to curing it. Figuring this out is a good step.

Cover by Sam Collins, all rights are mine.

Let No Man Put Asunder: the character arcs

As I’ve mentioned before, Let No Man Put Asunder is a rewrite of my second novel. I rewrote it in the 1990s and improved it with no better result getting publisher or agent attention. I tried a third rewrite which never got a finished draft, and now this version, which is much stronger. Maybe not stronger yet than version two — that one was really good — but I think it will be by the time I finish.

Last week I discussed one of the changes from the previous versions: a much larger cast. Going over the manuscript this week and thinking about Paul and Mandy’s character arcs, I saw another problem. To wit, that I’ve given them similar character arcs to their earlier incarnations, Neil and Adrienne, and they’re not the same people.

Neil and Adrienne were in a good place when their adventures began. Adrienne, an archeology/history buff, daydreams of uncovering lost cities; Neil fantasizes about being a hardboiled PI. That’s as far as their discomfort goes. I wanted to make them ordinary people, happy in their lives, when they’re dragged into a crazy world of adventure against their will.

Paul and Mandy aren’t in a good place. Paul’s dispute with his parents over his academic future has ended with them cutting off support; he’s now busing tables at a greasy spoon to support himself. Mandy, after years caring for her invalid father and raising her five siblings (Mom decided Dad’s terminal illness was too much to deal with so she split). Now her dad is dead, her brothers and sisters are out of the house, she’s ready to start living her own life … and yet she has no idea what to do next (there are reasons).

I have a rough idea of their emotional state when the book starts but going over it made me see I need a much stronger grasp. Paul in particular. Mandy could keep going the way she is for a while; Paul’s feeling a lot more stress. Does he want to resume his academic life? Make a clean break? Reconcile with his parents? Build a life without them?

As I’ve blogged about several times, Orson Scott Card breaks down four types of stories. They can center on the milieu, a question, the character arc or the plot. Maria in Southern Discomfort starts in crisis and ends with the crisis resolved. Her experiences in Pharisee Ga. stem partly out of her own decisions. Paul and Mandy, on the other hand, didn’t do anything. Other hands pulled strings and brought on the crisis in which they find themselves, hunted by mercenaries through the streets of Bluestone, Pa. It’s more plot-driven than character driven

Nevertheless, the first chapter is heavily focused on their personal problems and their discomfort with their lives. The ending chapter, at least in the second draft deals with them wrapping up their personal conflicts or at any rate making a start on fixing them. Their character arc is just as important as the plot arc. I have to know where they are at the start and how the adventure changes them. Unlike Neil, Paul doesn’t fantasize about being Sam Spade or Mike Hammer and he’s not getting a thrill off being plunged into danger. And the revelations about how he got involved in this will be way more unsettling than what Neil discovered.

Neil’s arc also involved him meeting his dream woman — not necessarily eternal love, but way more than the casual affairs he’s experienced. As I wrote in the previous post, Cordelia/Paul doesn’t seem to work the same way, so maybe not. For Mandy, I have a clearer idea of her ending arc and ideally sex is part of it — but again, the guy she sleeps with doesn’t seem to fit the book at all. Different lover? Change the arc? I’m not sure.

While there’s clearly a lot of work ahead, all of this is fixable. Hopefully without taking as long as I usually do.

Cover image by Sam Collins, all rights are mine.

Third draft challenge: what to do with my cast

Writing Southern Discomfort took more than a decade.

Not that I spent the whole time struggling to create my novel. During that period I had various income-generating writing gigs, I wrote three movie books, I had other fiction projects. Still, I’d prefer to finish Let No Man Put Asunder much more quickly. I am, after all, getting older and with less time left, I feel the need to use it effectively.

Routinely at some point in the creative process I take my most recent draft and shift from repeated pantsing to plotting. With novels, this hasn’t ever worked well. This time, I’m determined it will. I’ve read over the second draft, taken lengthy notes, taken more based on how-to writing books and articles … now the replotting begins.

What have I learned from the reread? For one thing, my book’s gotten way too crowded.

In the previous version (this is a rewrite of an earlier novel) the supporting cast for Neil and Adrienne (now Paul and Mandy) included the telekinetic tween Plutarch; his robot sidekick Talos; chief antagonists Celathion and Grainge; Cordelia Winters, Neil’s swashbuckling love interest; Renador, high-tech thief; and Peacock and Mountebank who show up in the last quarter along with a couple more bit players. Plus Mircalla Karnstein, the vampire from J. Sheridan LeFanu’s “Carmilla,” who appears off-and-on.

In this version, the big change was setting everything in Mandy’s hometown, Bluestone, rather than having Mandy and Paul cast out into the multiverse. I think it’s the right move but an unanticipated side effect is that it’s expanded the cast. Mandy’s siblings. Hillier and Oriel, two Bluestone police detectives investigating the goings on. Plus Renador (now Raga) and Cordelia. Plus Peacock and Mountebank appearing a lot more. Plus Flavia (the former Plutarch) and Talos. And because I made Flavia black, she needs to have more of her own arc than Plutarch did, so she doesn’t end up a helpful Magical Negro.

The book is overstuffed. I think the villains can be worked out without too much trouble but the heroes? Cordelia feels awkward; the romance arc doesn’t work. I’m not sure if she’s become the wrong character as Paul develops, or there’s simply not space to develop it. Raga feels completely tacked on, like he no longer fits the narrative. A shame as I wound up with him and Mandy sleeping together, which fits her character arc (I’ll get into that later). My scene with Countess Karnstein feels awkward too. In the previous draft they stumbled smoothly into her lair, and the fight is intense; here it’s lacking. As I have one of her vampire lackeys taking point to hunt Paul and Mandy, I’m wondering if I shouldn’t leave Karnstein in the background or drop her completely.

Quite simply, there’s not enough space for everyone to develop. It’s not just about them having character arcs — various characters drop out of the plot when it feels like they should stick around. I fixed some of that in this last draft, but not enough. One option is to write bigger and give them all a role. Another, probably the more practical choice, is to trim the cast and develop the rest more.

Which to cut? Raga and the countess most obviously, but beyond that? Well, there’s Mandy’s family: four out of her five siblings show up but it might be better if one of them was out of town.

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The arc of the book tends towards flatness …

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