Tuesday, March 28, 2006

Three steps forward...

One back. It's not fair that the easy chapters to revise fly by and the nasty ones linger. Well, maybe it IS fair, cause I'd get just as sick of the good ones, I suppose. I made huge headway on Friday, revising three entire chapters that apparently, um, did not have huge problems. Today was a little different. The first scene seemed like it would be stronger from the other character's pov.

Generally speaking, in a multi-pov novel (there's four in this one), the writer has to make some choices as to which character's eyes to see each scene from. Sometimes it's easy...only one of the pov characters might be present. If more than one are present, I take a closer look. Basically I use two criteria: which character has the most to lose in this scene? And: how many scenes have gone by since I used this character's pov.

Unfortunately my original choice had been based on the second criteria, rather than the first. The confrontation took place between the antagonist, who has just gotten a somewhat tenuous grip on the thing he has always wanted, and the male main character, who helped make it happen but now regrets it. It seemed time to get into the antagonist's mind, so I used it. I think the new scene is stronger. Hopefully there are enough clues for the reader to catch that the antagonist is just using nice words to cover up, but Treyan, fresh from a joyous experience of his own, wants to believe the best in everybody. This one scene took all of today, and it isn't even a long one.

Not because it wasn't coming together but because it was simply a hecticly busy day at work, as was yesterday (when I gave up and critted three chapters instead of doing creative work). These people are coming out of the WOODWORK and they all think their floors should be done next week. They don't like hearing words like *June* or *July*. I'm actually WORKing at work these days: making phone calls, setting up appointments, placing orders, screwing up orders (yay me) and pacifying people. Probably the longest stretch either day that I could focus would be about twenty minutes before the phone would ring or the door would open.

But the revision plows on. I have my sights set to get it off to critters by the end of April. **Crosses fingers.

1 comment:

Erin M. Hartshorn said...

What? They expect you to work? Don't they know that cuts into your writing and revising? Honestly!

Sounds like the scene is much stronger now. Congratulations!