A look behind the writing of “Voice of the Victim” Part II
Let’s peek behind the scenes again , shall we?
In the previous blog entry, I described the early history of what became Voice of the Victim. This time I want to describe the challenge I faced when I decided to integrate what was the first part of Pele’s Fire into this book to avoid all of those flashbacks in the third book.
I quickly realized that I now had four separate timelines to integrate. The first and main timeline was one for the ‘Iao Valley Shooting and it’s investigation on Maui by Sgt. Angela Beyers, which spanned from 6:45 p.m. (Maui time), Sunday, July 7, 2013 to 7:30 p.m. (Maui time), Monday, July 14, 2013 in the novel. The second timeline was the one for Keone and Julies honeymoon, which spanned from 6:50 p.m. (Maui time), Sunday, July 7, 2013 to 8:30 a.m. (Athens time), Monday, July 15, 2013. The third timeline is that for the manuscript that Rob Lister left on his computer, which spans from 7:02:06 p.m. (Maui time), Sunday July 7, 2013 to 9:05:00 p.m. (Maui time), Sunday, July 7, 2013. The fourth timeline was for when specific sections of the manuscript were read by various characters, which spanned from 2:30 p.m. (Maui time), Monday, July 8, 2013 to 9:30 p.m. (Maui time), Saturday, July 12, 2013.
For the story to make sense I had to tell it in chronological order from the Maui perspective, but keep track of the actual times in the other three timelines. To do this I developed a scene worksheet on an Excel spreadsheet that kept track of the time on Maui that every scene took place, as well as the times involved in the other timelines where appropriate. That meant also tying each scene to one or more of the subplots involved in the story, especially the ‘Iao Valley Shooting, Keone’s Honeymoon, and the Impossible Manuscript. I’ve attached a picture of the first page of this worksheet to the right to illustrate the complexity involved. This worksheet spanned 146 scenes and five pages.
Throughout the process of writing Voice of the Victim, I had to look back and forth between the actual manuscript, this worksheet, and my overall timeline for the series to make sure everything lined up.
At one point during editing, I received feedback from a couple of my beta readers that one day of the Honeymoon really didn’t move the story forward and should be deleted. They had no clue how difficult this would be, but they were absolutely right. It took me an entire week to make that simple change, but it made the story better and actually made more sense of when things were happening in the parallel timelines.
Once I had completed this change and realigned the Manuscript, the Worksheet, and the Series Timeline, I read through the entire thing again and made one last set of edits, before sending it to my publisher.
I’ll describe that part of the process in my next blog. Best wishes and Aloha.
Rick
Screen capture of scene worksheet.
Series Timeline before sections from book two and book three merged in Voice of the Victim. (Book two sections in Blue; Book three sections in red.)
About the pictures:
Top picture: Screen capture of first page of scene worksheet for Voice of the Victim.
Bottom picture: Photo of series timeline before merger of part of book three into Voice of the Victim.