Chapter five and onward

Started work on chapter five this morning and I'm a bit iffy on it at the moment due to the way it felt rather clumsy in the wording and flow. Keeping with my penchant to adjust or totally change things, I made a bold move to pin chapter four's events on everyone that has a high security clearance in the book, including the main character, with no actually knowing who the real suspect is. The reason for this is my attempts to convey a hidden agenda behind the scenes by one of the characters that is working surprisingly well enough, but it is causing some to grow suspicious and investigate, which leads to chapter five and onwards events.

The next few chapters are the ones that, in the previous drafts, were the turning points of the book, the climax persay, the half way point in other terms. If I keep this mantle of thought, then the rest of the story should flow rather smoothly as the evidence comes together and everyone is on board on what must be done. A few more twists and turns come at opportune times, and a few of the new characters I'm wanting to introduce may come to fruition very soon, including revamped members of the United Kingdom's SOCA branch. So far, I have not yet pinned down details, but things are progressing well - and it's turning into more of an open narrative at this point, trying to balance the action and suspense, with some lighthearted time between the main character and his team, and love interest.

With the advent of this new measure of thinking, I am hoping that the story does not get bogged down too much. In the later chapters, more emphasis is placed on tactical intelligence and planning, along with finalizing the growing relationships between some characters while also not forgetting they exist. In the past, the entirely of the story comes to a head in the final "mission" and I believe this will hold true now. I'm looking at adjusting some details with the final encounter, and some other misc. events, but for the most part - I am happy with the direction the story is going since I have managed to put some measure of darkness in the story telling, with more emphasis on the horrors that war brings, including mental scaring on the part of the main character as he is forced to deal with an increasingly more depressing past that at one point, threatens to tear him apart on the inside.

The ending chapters is what has me a bit confounded at the moment while I was thinking ahead this morning, but I believe I will either expand on those as to finish out the loose ends that I may leave, and also to bring a closure to the ten year struggle that the main character faced dealing with his past, good and bad. The love interest will have a huge role in this, and her presence cannot be understated. Part of the research that her and her companion are working on comes into limbo at some point, and I'm debating on whether they will actually get a chance to deploy the countermeasure of the alpha project, or if it just comes down to a race against the clock with the main team rushing to save millions of people that are risk from a full out genocide via the virus's capabilities. In the first draft, the countermeasure was completed just prior to the final "mission", and after the main team had finished that leg of the journey, it was deployed from the air to destroy the stock of the virus that was at the base just after it was leveled in a carpet bombing. In the second draft, it was finished just prior to another mission and that one felt much more clumsy in its wording and flow than the original. So, I'm debating on whether or not I'll work with the original drafts outline and flesh out some more details on that. In the end, it has the same result and while I don't want to reduce the role of the love interest and her companion, at this point - how long are the bad guys willing to wait? Given the way I have adjusted some of them in this draft, not very long.

Time will tell.