Okay, squiders. I have finally started my revision on Book 1. Well, a week or so ago. I read through the current draft (put it in the mode that makes it like a book and occasionally clicked on a comment to see what it said) and took some notes. I still need to look over the feedback I got from the critique marathon last summer, but hopefully I shall get to that here today or tomorrow.
But I find myself in a bit of a pickle.
So, I’ve revised books before. I use a modified version of the process Holly Lisle teaches in her How to Revise Your Novel class, which I’ve found to be very useful over the years. Heck, Book 1 has been revised this way itself, to get it into its current state, which is a million times better than the previous draft was and is, in general, pretty solid.
The problem is the beginning. My critique people last summer rightly pointed out that one of my two viewpoint characters is lacking internal conflict at the beginning of the story. She’s fine later, once the main plot is rolling along, but at the beginning, she’s lacking.
I suspect what happened is that I’ve got two viewpoint characters (chapters alternate, for the most part), and the other one has given me issues for years. Back when these two characters were characters I role-played (many years and a couple universes ago), he was essentially the villain. So every iteration of the story I’ve had to tame him down a bit to fit the plot. He got a major overhaul between the last and the current draft, and I’m really happy with him now–he’s sympathetic and believable, even if he still does questionable things from time to time. But I think, since he was so difficult compared to the other viewpoint character, that I mostly focused on him and saw her as being essentially fine (probably just by comparison). And now she’s lacking, and I’m having a hard time figuring out what to do with her.
And how to approach the revision as a whole. As I mentioned, once the main plot gets rolling, the story mainly needs tweaks (a couple of subplots get a little lost in the middle, but it should be relatively easy to weave them back in). But I’ve never just revised part of a story. Normally I do the whole thing, and it takes forever, but that what I’m used to. I’ve never had a draft before that’s mostly working but having issues in a few places.
Plus, because I did such a massive overhaul of everything last time, it feels weird to change things. Like, this is a story I have written on and off for eighteen years (holy crap), and almost nothing is the same as that first 2004/5 draft. Almost everyone has a different personality than they started with, half the character have different names, the plot has changed and subplots have been added or taken out. So I haven’t had any issues making changes, til now. But now, it feels weird. Sigh. Brains are weird.
Anyway, I spent some time talking to a friend on Tuesday about Lana (my female MC) and her lack of internal conflict, and we came up with something at the time, but in retrospect it was more of a character arc than internal conflict, so I may be back where I started. Hopefully going through the marathon feedback will help, but if I recall, the internal conflict issue didn’t come out until a discussion after the fact.
So, wish me luck. Hopefully this gets sorted quickly and I can get to the actual revision, once I have ideas and a process in place.
Happy Saturday, squiders!
