Working on Sandworms of Dune

Concentration time, at last. After days on the road, trying to edit a bit here and there in the mornings and on airplanes, I've finally had most of a week just to work on SANDWORMS.

This draft of the novel currently has 88 chapters, and as with any other part of the DUNE saga, there are numerous plot threads that intertwine; chapters are told from various points of view, and all the timing has to work out. Now that the story has been drafted, Brian and I need concentration time just to sink in, to study the chapters and the detailed structure of the plot. It's hard to see missing links, unexplained connections, redundancies or contradictions, when you can only work on a couple of chapters a day.

Since returning from the library talk and Rebecca's surprise party in Livermore, I've spent much of the time editing nearly thirty chapters of SANDWORMS, getting close to the end. The story in these two volumes brings to a grand climax the myriad plot threads from Frank Herbert's six DUNE chronicles as well as the three HOUSE novels and the Butlerian Jihad trilogy. Now that I'm near the end of SANDWORMS, everything is really popping -- and careful timing and choreography is crucial. I see scenes that need to be fleshed out, additional chapters required to connect certain stories, slow spots that could be trimmed, emotional scenes that could be pumped up.

There's a lot more work, but that's always the case at this stage of a DUNE novel. Brian is currently doing the same thing in the next draft of HUNTERS; by mid-December, we'll be swapping novels again and proceed with the subsequent set of revisions.

--KJA

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