Murder in Heliopolis: Draft 2

That's right, ladies and gents, the second draft of my futuristic crime thriller is officially underway! 🎊 

(The improved Chapter 1 will be shared on my newsletter at the end of this month, so subscribe!)

 

A little while ago, I was chatting with a fellow writer on Discord, and she was talking about how she was currently in the editing stages of writing her book. She mentioned that for her, a lot of the significant editing takes place in the plotting stages, but I'm not much of a plotter, especially not on the first draft, so that defeated the purpose for me, particularly for this story, since it was already "fully" drafted. 

Nevertheless, I caught the bug. I got motivated from her enthusiasm and excitement for her story, and I had my Murder in Heliopolis manuscript lying next to me, and I thought, What the heck? It's been a few years, anyway. It's time. 

As of my writing this, I'm 2 chapters into the second draft of Murder in Heliopolis. There have, of course, been other "second draft" attempts - all of which were failures because I was trying to take my manuscript and edit it directly. It proved overwhelming, and this time I decided to simply rewrite the whole thing from scratch. It'll take longer, but it's a whole lot simpler. 

I do have to be a little careful still. Ever since whatever nerve-related injury I had previously (I still suspect ulnar nerve damage), I haven't been able to type for very long. Even as I type this now, there's a dull ache in my elbow. It's one of the reasons I've hugely reduced how much writing I do in my day-to-day. 

But I've noticed that without writing, I feel aimless. I end up watching series and movies, or playing video games - and wanting to write stories to rival the ones I enjoyed so much. It all comes back full-circle. Life sure does like to torture us, doesn't it?

That's just how the cookie crumbles, I guess. We all have our own tests to undergo. This is one of mine.

But enough about the sad stuff. Let's get to the meat of this update. 

New Plots Unfurling in Heliopolis?

On the whole, the new plot is a lot like the old one. Laith is assigned a homicide, and the AI that runs Heliopolis, PATET, is completely and impossibly stumped with regards to the fingerprints left on scene. With PATET continuing to fail at its job, Laith has to do some old-fashioned detective work. His investigation uncovers a criminal conspiracy and a dangerous realization that PATET is being controlled by someone for nefarious reasons, and he is unable to fight against this person alone. Ultimately, (spoiler? the story has been free to read on Royal Road for years now, so...) Laith is unable to defeat this mighty foe who controls Heliopolis and ends up meeting his fate in a grizzly car crash. 

Originally, this ending felt like a rip-off, because it was a cliffhanger ending meant to usher readers into the next volume of the series, but it felt rushed, and readers generally didn't like that. I myself agree with the sentiment 100%. Part of why I set the ending and rushed it was because I wrote this story for the Writeathon, and after it was done, I was burnt out and I wanted to just get it off my plate. 

However, another reason that I used this ending was because I'd written myself into a corner. I couldn't really see a way for Laith to actually come up on top. If the Bad People controlled PATET, they controlled everything in Heliopolis. That meant they could make things malfunction, or frame people for crimes, or mismanage funds, or destroy evidence, and so on and so forth. Nothing was outside their realm of command. Heck - they could even insert someone into CCTV footage if they wanted, to make it look like they were there - and vice versa. 

All of this made it hard for me to think of any way for Laith to succeed against them. Moreover, it felt like the only way the story could progress was by having these people take that power and use it against Laith - because logically, that's what they would do to try and get rid of him. 

As a writer, I felt it would be a rip-off not to explore that path in the storytelling. So, I'm keeping that particular element in - the plot point of the car crash. But the plot has been refined so that it makes better sense, is paced more evenly, and the fat is trimmed off the sides. More characters are introduced, with their POVs sprinkled into the story, and two whole new parts that continue the story will also be added, each of them focusing on characters other than Laith.

The second part of the book goes back in time to focus on a character called Orken, who is the main line of resistance against the Devils in the Ruins - the organization with controls PATET. It follows Orken's story: how Orken became a victim of the Devils, how he survived the experience, and how the experience radicalized him, turning him into a vigilante who will stop at nothing to bring the Devils down. He plays an important role in the story, especially in the following part.

Part Three of the book brings us back into the present, months after Laith's terrible accident, and focuses on the last remnants of those who fight against the Devils - who even know of its existence. They take a final stand against the Devils in the Ruins, and some familiar faces from the first part of the book make their return for this final battle.

The book is going to be a lot longer as a result. Part One - which consists of the original manuscript, more or less - is about 270 pages long. I'm aiming for Part Two to be somewhere in the 60-90 page ball-park, and Part Three will probably be about 100-150 pages at least.  

So, even though the second draft is well on its way, there's still a lot of work to be done. Parts Two and Three have to be written from scratch. That means they'll need editing later on, too. That means that this whole story is going to take quite a while for me to finish. Nevertheless, I'm proud of myself for taking that first step this month. 

That's enough for this update, but there's more to talk about, so keep an eye out for more details.

And, if you'd like to read an excerpt of the "new" first chapter, make sure to subscribe to my newsletter, since that's the reader goodie for May!