What I'm Doing with the Discordant Harmonies Series

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Years ago, when I finished the third book of the Discordant Harmonies series, I thought I was done-done with them as well. I never felt like they were what I wanted them to be, but I couldn't figure out how to fix them to make them what I wanted them to be, so I went ahead and posted them on Wattpad. And then I proceeded to ignore them, not even reading through them because I have this issue with reading works I don't feel fit my image of them. 

Well, back in March, I figured out what the issue is with the series. DH01, A Pitch of the Scale, is, plain and simply, incomplete. I employed a lot of handwavium and Because I The Author Said So to complete that story as well. There's a lot of stuff that doesn't make sense—like, an institution as old and well-established as the Temple of the True Gods in the Édalain Empire would, long ago, have set up an intake process for new members of the Temple. I also needed a better excuse for Géta not to report the bullies' attacks on him, and I needed to set that reason up well. 

I'm not sure about DH02, Severe Notes. It may be fine pretty much as it is. I'll take a look at it when I get to it. One thing I do know for certain is that I'm going to move some of DH03 to the ending of DH02 so it's not such a cliffhanger. What appealed to me in the first draft no longer fits the vision I have for this story.

And DH03, Measure of Resistance, is, really, quite bloated. I need to condense it, cut stuff, and generally rework the entire book to make it less cumbersome. 

So this has led to me starting the process of performing a developmental edit on the entire series. I'm changing quite a bit. Some characters are getting sex changes. Others' names are changing. I'm bringing forward characters who don't actually appear until the next book in the forms of letters they 're writing to Asthané and changing things in Géta's background, as well as setting up events for future books.

Oh, and I've finally realized "DH04" was never meant to be. At least, not as the series was originally conceived. There may be a DH04 after I'm done with the developmental edit, and the books afterward have changed substantially enough in mere conception that I'll be kicking off a brand new series to handle those stories. 

As of the writing of this blog post, DH01 stands at I think ~52k words in its developmental edit. I'm having fun with this, and feeling enthusiastic about working with Géta and Asthané again. I'm not much referring to the original draft and am focusing on fleshing out and showing more of the stuff that I glossed over and merely told in the first draft. Aside from that, I'm writing scenes that I want to keep from DH01's original draft from memory, using them as signposts on the way through this new draft. 

Overall, I'm happy with what I've got. It's a much more interesting story so far. To those who are wholly wedded to the original drafts of this story, I'll be leaving those versions up on Wattpad indefinitely for you to revisit whenever you want. The new books will have all-new covers and, I hope, will be published for sale once I'm done with them.