The Book Project... process and planning

My original plans for the book project were to make a story about a cowboy and his father. They would not know about each other until a mysterious phone call came about. Unfortunately, without words, this message would have been hard to convey especially because I wanted to have the son end up killing the president since the father works for him.. etc it goes on from complicated to more so. I liked my story line very much and so I was devastated when I had to part from it to make it more simple. The most challenging parts of the project have been deciding carefully what to put on the pages to show what story I picture in my head. Some of the things I wanted to depict are a bit more extravagant than what I was capable of doing without words so I had to break it down. Also my pictures didn't give me much to work with besides the people so I scramble to make the white on the page disappear. Some of the things that are going well are my first and last pictures because I really show the emotion I am looking for in these pictures. Something that isn't going well is trying to make the middle pages coherent to the rest of my story.