Ryan M. Patrick

In my update early last month, I talked about how I wasn’t happy with the last draft of Crush Depth and how I was going to start over.

Here, the first in the series, I did a postmortem to figure out where I went wrong. Then I did a 3-act summary and expanded that into a 45-chapter outline.

And then I started writing!

The prologue was the easiest. Here’s from my outline:

Prologue: A Russian submarine, trailed by an American sub, is listening to an American space launch with experimental quantum processing gear. It is attacked by an unseen force, dragging it to a watery grave.

This is very similar to the prologue of the first draft and the first chapter of the last one. There’s two differences here – the Russian submarine Vepr is tailed by an American one (the USS Arizona, the primary setting of the last two attempts!) and it’s using quantum processing gear, rather than an active SIGINT method, to listen to telemetry from an American space launch. I also added more technical details per feedback from my readers (not my beta readers/author friends – their advice is the opposite of my paying customers).

This is from the last two versions:

And this is from the one I just wrote:

And both versions end the same way – the as-of-yet unexplained mosasaurs attack the submarine and drag it down to beyond its “crush depth” – the depth at which the hull is rated for.

I give some extra clues here, connecting the mosasaurs to RF energy, but I’m willing to bet that 99% of readers will forget it before it’s explained later in the novel.

Chapter One is similar too:

Chapter One: Grace Parkowski arrives on the USS Delbert D. Black and goes through a quick psychological and physical screen. Afterward, she sees the ship arrive at an oil rig off of the coast of Puerto Rico.

It’s similar to the opening of both Sphere and Deep Storm and until the end changed very little from the second version – which was 100% different from the first one. I introduce Grace Parkowski, the main character, I give her some character motivation, and I give lots of technical details to establish my bona fides as an expert in aerospace/military matters. I also moved the main events from April to September of 2029 to put it into hurricane season.

The middle is a lot of dialog, and here I foreshadow a lot of what’s about to come.

Like I said, the ending is different – and I literally cannot help myself with making Atlantis references!

It’s not my best first chapter – that’s from The Europan Deception – but it’s far from my worst, and it’s a million times better than Lag Delay‘s.

Chapter Two is 100% different from either of the last two versions.

Chapter Two: Parkowski goes from the ship to the oil rig and gets asked more questions, then is briefed by Commander Daniela Carmano. She is here to recover a sensor from a Russian submarine that recently sunk in the area – a copied one from a technology she worked on in a previous project. Parkowski will go to an undersea habitat where the Navy is operating and help with the recovery effort.

Carmano’s name has changed a few times, but she’s a constant in this story. She’s complimentary to Parkowski, but also a foil as well – she knows much more than she’s letting on. Carmano plays the role of Dr. Pham from the previous novel but doesn’t meet his untimely fate.

Mission briefing is pretty self-explanatory.

We have a reason for Grace to be here.

And we have our next location! Which will be explained more in the next chapter.

I hope you’re enjoying this – it really helps me from a process perspective to be able to explain how my writing works. Maybe it will help someone?

Next week, we’ll go through Chapters Three through Five!