Love, hate, and stubborn subplots
Minstrels of Fate has been a love and hate thing for me the past two months. More hate than love at times.
Even though I know the overall critique group commentary on this hasn't been as major as it was for Normal I have still felt the sting of this-is-all-screwed-up-and-I'm-a-screw up. I've noticed that I work on my rough drafts with a myopic focus on the main plot. The subplots just flounder, but they are there. My second pass through, I notice the subplots and try to string them together. However, it's only when my critique partners chime in that I really start scraping down to my characters' emotional cores.
Considering how a romance figures prominently in Minstrels of Fate, that emotional core is kinda important.
I made my main plot hard on my characters. However, I wasn't sure about the proper emotional obstacles for their relationship. It can't be too easy or there's no story.
One of my main goals for Writo de Mayo was to finish this full revision pass on Minstrels of Fate. It was a stupid, unrealistic goal on top of everything else. I found that I was adding a lot of words as I went along and developed those subplots. I did almost from-scratch rewrites of several scenes. I grumbled and glared at the screen a lot. The past few days, I added in an entirely new chapter.
The end result is that I finally figured out how to pace the romantic subplot. I think. I have about 60 pages of book left to go through, four chapters, and there's still old wishy-washy relationship stuff I need to weed out there.
At least at this point I'm starting to feel the love instead of the hate.
Even though I know the overall critique group commentary on this hasn't been as major as it was for Normal I have still felt the sting of this-is-all-screwed-up-and-I'm-a-screw up. I've noticed that I work on my rough drafts with a myopic focus on the main plot. The subplots just flounder, but they are there. My second pass through, I notice the subplots and try to string them together. However, it's only when my critique partners chime in that I really start scraping down to my characters' emotional cores.
Considering how a romance figures prominently in Minstrels of Fate, that emotional core is kinda important.
I made my main plot hard on my characters. However, I wasn't sure about the proper emotional obstacles for their relationship. It can't be too easy or there's no story.
One of my main goals for Writo de Mayo was to finish this full revision pass on Minstrels of Fate. It was a stupid, unrealistic goal on top of everything else. I found that I was adding a lot of words as I went along and developed those subplots. I did almost from-scratch rewrites of several scenes. I grumbled and glared at the screen a lot. The past few days, I added in an entirely new chapter.
The end result is that I finally figured out how to pace the romantic subplot. I think. I have about 60 pages of book left to go through, four chapters, and there's still old wishy-washy relationship stuff I need to weed out there.
At least at this point I'm starting to feel the love instead of the hate.