Ryan M. Patrick

Last week, I talked about what went wrong with the last version of Crush Depth and why I had to throw out a nearly 100,000 word second draft.

This week, I’m going to discuss how I am going to go from a new one-sentence summary to a full 3-act outline. It’ll be followed in subsequent weeks by how I go from that to a chapter-by-chapter outline and then I’ll start drafting. This will be my next project – I need to get this book done before I move on to another one.

Here’s my one-sentence summary:

Same main character as Lag Delay, with the plot being totally unconnected to that book. However, instead of a NASA/Space Force vibe, I’ll be focusing on the U.S. Navy and DARPA.

Why DAPRA? Because I’ve worked with the CIA in a past life and don’t want to get too close to anything like Project Azorian that may be ongoing!

Anyways, I want to structure the novel similar to the last two drafts. The sentient mosasauruses will attack at roughly the halfway point. The twist at the end of the first act will be that they are recovering an American submarine, not a Russian one – but there are pieces of the Russian boat strewn around the same debris field. Quantum technology will play a major role as well as the creatures can communicate through quantum entanglement.

The prologue will be very similar.

The biggest difference will be that the Vepr will be trailing an American fast-attack boat, the USS Arizona, rather than monitoring telemetry from a launch out of the Cape.

The first act won’t change that much. Just need to make some modifications – we’ll be on a habitat, not a submarine, and the travel will be different. The tricky point is where the first act ends – I’m as of right now going to have it roughly be the first time we catch a glimpse of the mosasaurs.

It’s a short first act, but that’s a good thing! I want to get to the meat of the conflict as soon as possible.

The second act is going to be the most different. The relationships and characters on the habitat will be totally dissimilar other than some names staying the same.

Lots of try/fail cycles here, and I’ll probably change it even more in the next step where I got to chapter-by-chapter descriptions.

The third act, shockingly, will be somewhat similar – especially the 2nd half of it. I’ll push the habitat to the edge of the trench, not the sub, but it’ll be the same tense situation.

That “conversation” at the end? I’ve already written and refined it! This part will probably go pretty quickly.

And, of course the epilogue – which I’m not planning to change at all.

To be honest, I’m a little worried if I’m trimming it down too much. My goal is between 90,000 and 100,000 words and I’m chopping a lot from the last draft, both in terms of point of view and also subplots. I’ll probably add some stuff when I do the next step of my process – creating chapter-by-chapter summaries.

Thanks for reading and I’ll be posting about that next step next week!