Choices
Halfway through the month. Or more specifically halfway through September Writing month. Currently, I'm somewhere between halfway and three quarters of the way through my LitS rewrite. Things are going okay, but starting to slow down. I'm scrutinizing my last draft, trying to figure out what it isn't clicking and why.
In what should be a completely unrelated bit of news, I'm powering through The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. Which is spectacular. If you haven't read it yet, I must ask...why the hell not? Go to the bookstore, the library, wherever, and pick it up now. You won't be disappointed. It skyrockets past the hype :)
So I'm reading, loving the main character and the story more and more with each page, and I realize something. Katniss, the main character, is trapped in this arena, making choices to survive. I'll say that again in case you missed it: making choices to survive.
Choices.
Authoress' blog post for today can tell you more about it than I can at Miss Snark's First Victim (which is a fantastic blog where she posts several times a week and holds Secret Agent contests).
And something clicked. Maybe Lost in the Shadows rewrites are slowing down is because my MC is having too much thrown at her and not having the minute, split-second she needs to decide what to do. There has to be more than action and reaction. There has to be a choice. Does she stay or does she go? Fight or run? And why does she choose that path?
Choices not only make or break the character, but they also reveal character. And I know this, this isn't new info, but somehow, in someway, I've overlooked it, maybe not completely, but enough to tangle the story into knots (and not the good kind).
With new knowledge in hand, I'm diving back into rewrites. Now my only problem is to start over from the beginning or make a note and move on, knowing what I now need to weave into the story.
Lunch first, choices second.
In what should be a completely unrelated bit of news, I'm powering through The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. Which is spectacular. If you haven't read it yet, I must ask...why the hell not? Go to the bookstore, the library, wherever, and pick it up now. You won't be disappointed. It skyrockets past the hype :)
So I'm reading, loving the main character and the story more and more with each page, and I realize something. Katniss, the main character, is trapped in this arena, making choices to survive. I'll say that again in case you missed it: making choices to survive.
Choices.
Authoress' blog post for today can tell you more about it than I can at Miss Snark's First Victim (which is a fantastic blog where she posts several times a week and holds Secret Agent contests).
And something clicked. Maybe Lost in the Shadows rewrites are slowing down is because my MC is having too much thrown at her and not having the minute, split-second she needs to decide what to do. There has to be more than action and reaction. There has to be a choice. Does she stay or does she go? Fight or run? And why does she choose that path?
Choices not only make or break the character, but they also reveal character. And I know this, this isn't new info, but somehow, in someway, I've overlooked it, maybe not completely, but enough to tangle the story into knots (and not the good kind).
With new knowledge in hand, I'm diving back into rewrites. Now my only problem is to start over from the beginning or make a note and move on, knowing what I now need to weave into the story.
Lunch first, choices second.