Welcome to a new blog series called Pangaea Commentary. Each week I’ll be diving into one chapter of my book, Pangaea: Unsettled Land, in sequential order to give you the following:
- my thoughts on my intentions for the chapter
- how things changed through various drafts
- why you should love this chapter
- and even why you may stop reading
I’ve learned a lot about my craft by going through the process of writing and publishing this book. This will be a great way to share what I’ve learned and provide some entertaining tidbits.
Spoiler Alert
The following will contain spoilers. Haven’t read Pangaea yet? Buy it now and follow along.
Chapter 4 Summary
In this chapter, we get more acquainted with Douglassaire as he trains for the Power Battle. It’s a big brawl that the Southern Third has to determine its new leader, the Commander. We learn that he is a trained warrior for his country along with the others including Lesech, his rival.
Lesech, we learn, is eager to spill blood on the battlefield. He also has a mysterious advantage when he and Doug square off in a duel. Lesech wins and Doug is a bit rattled.
Goals for Chapter 4
The goal was to add new layers to the story and set up an antagonist, Lesech. In the previous chapter, Doug dropped a rumor about a guy who may be an Etherean. In this chapter, we see Doug struggling to fight against Lesech in a weird way. Hopefully, I dropped enough hints to let people know that this was the guy.
This also gave Doug a little backstory about being at Burrow University on scholarship for being one of the best warriors. And it set up the greater arc for him with the coming Power Battle.
What You Should Love
This chapter is quick and to the point, and shows the energy that you’ll get with fight scenes. In fact, this is the first fight scene in the book. It’s a good change of pace from the previous chapters.
You’ll love Douglassaire’s range of emotion. In the previous chapter we only saw him as a curious, cool, friendly type. But in this chapter, we saw that he can get angry too, making him a fully-fleshed character.
Lesech, on the other hand is smug and you get the sense that he’s a bit jealous of Doug. And you get a glimpse at where this intense emotion can take him.
What You May Dislike
You may be turned off by the “telling” and not “showing” of Douglassaire’s background. I just didn’t want to slow the story down even more with those details. At this point, I needed some things to pick up, and what better way to do that than a fight scene with foreshadowing of a larger fight to come?
You may also have wanted a better way of describing Lesech’s “unhinged-ness” than me just writing, “[Doug] just remained on the green grass looking up at Lesech – staring into the face of insanity.” Hopefully the way I wrote the chapter as a whole sold his character for you.
What’s Next
In chapter 5 we get back to Gisela and get an update on how the ice-skating accident affected her life. Plus, her secret crush on Slade.
What are your thoughts?
What did you like or dislike about this chapter? Leave a comment and let’s talk about it.
If you haven’t already, sign up to my email list and get a short story in exchange. You’re gonna love it!