Who Was Moses?
I thought I’d completed my latest novel, Moses, but was reviewing it for the umpteenth time. The story follows the life of Moses, but definitely not the Biblical narrative. Based on new findings and theories about the time and man, my book is controversial. The man revered by all three Abrahamic religions was certainly not the man we find in the Bible's account.
When I was done with this re-reading, something plagued me. The novel is divided into three "books" and the first book is entirely focused on the Royal Court of the Pharaoh Amunhotep IV, who believed in one God and changed his name to Akhenaten to honor his chosen God, Aten (or Adon, in my telling).
I felt that something was missing. It took me weeks of thinking about this to finally get to the "aha!" moment. I was not changing perspective and also telling the story through the eye of the common man. I needed to add some chapters giving the reader a better understanding of the time and its people.
The Rewrite
Rewriting a novel you think is complete isn't easy. I don't know how other authors handle it, but the following weeks were a mess.
First, I had to outline the narrative that I wanted to incorporate. The added chapters would not be continuous and had to be woven into the storyline in the right places, without jarring the reader. They had to add depth and meaning to the story. This meant tearing the novel apart and reassemblng it to create a more nuanced story. Like I said, it was messy, with disassociated chapters in disparate folders on my computer. All I can say is thank heaven for Scrivener (I will be doing a two-part newsletter on Scrivener in future newsletters).
Then there were the characters. I had to flesh them out, find their strengths and flaws, figure out their motivations and how they would contribute to the story.
Once I was done with that, I had to change the original chapters to get the respective characters to meet, to interact, and to realistically advance the story.
If any of you have experienced something similar, please share it with our community. Let us know how you did it and what we can learn from your experience.