Starting My Rewrite with a BANG

Ok, let me fess up - the title of this post is more aspiration than reality.  It all started after my last post, when I sat down in front of a freshly created Word doc and set to the opening scene of my novel.  I chose a very dramatic moment in history, and was confident that my now-honed (or so I believed) writing skills were going to create an amazing first scene.

I wrote the opening - less than 2 pages, double spaced - and read it to my husband.  His face grew confused and he had to stop me before I had finished.  "Wait, where is this taking place again?  And who are these characters you're introducing?"  

I had done it YET AGAIN ... I had launched into exposition about characters the reader had not even met yet.  A very dark, sinking feeling crept over me, and even my husband's statement that I shouldn't worry, I just hadn't gotten into the flow of rewriting yet, did not comfort me.  

Shortly thereafter, I had to go to work.  I got in my car and turned on the radio.  Crowded House told me to stop dreaming, it was over.  I spent the rest of the day yearning to crawl into bed and put the covers over my head, indefinitely ...

But like many a writer-type prone to melodramatic bouts of victimhood, I snapped out of it the next day and set to reworking my intro.  The task is proving a lot harder than expected, but maybe that's a good thing.  I am fully aware - maybe too aware - of how important the first few pages, heck, the first few lines, of a novel are.  And so I am really running myself over the ringer to get my book off to a powerful, well-crafted start.  I sure hope I pick up momentum though, because at this rate, I might not finish this rewrite for another 5 years!

Which leads me to a brief announcement re how I plan to conduct this blog over the next few months.  My legal workload is ramping up, and this rewriting process is proving more arduous than I had expected (and I had already expected it was gonna be rough!)  So I'm going to go back to my original plan of "checking in" here once a week.  And of course, I will also be reading posts from all your blogs to learn the latest tricks of the trade, and ways to cope with the stresses of being an aspiring published writer!

FIGURING IT OUT AS I GO:  Ok, so maybe revising your novel or short story or memoir isn't going to be as easy as you'd hoped, despite all the how-to's and insightful writers' blogs you've read.  That's life!  Good things take hard work, right?  If you find yourself in a rut, just re-read the helpful tips that you know you should be following, and eventually these techniques will become 2nd nature.  Here are 2 excellent blog posts that I have benefited from recently: Me, My Muse and I and Caroline by line

The Truth Has Set Me Free! (Part II)

This post is a continuation on my conversation with one of my BEs over the weekend.  I won't go through and detail all of his comments; instead, I want to list a few key points I took away from the discussion:

• Give character relationships depth and conflict.  Specifically, he did not understand the initial attraction between Cora and her husband Arthur ("Being a 'nice guy' just doesn't cut it.")  He also wanted me to bring the growing tension between Lila and her best friend, Rosemarie, to a head, instead of allowing it to subside and letting life return to normal between them, which is the way the subplot is currently written.  There were several other relationships (Marcus-Edward, the playboy; Arthur-Ophelia) which my BE also thought needed heightened conflict and climax, and he's right.
• Work on dialogue and narrative style.  This is technically two comments, but they both deal with my overall writing proficiency.  My BE said I need to shorten some of the dialogue to make it more punchy and engaging, and also to pay attention to my point of view.  He says I pull the reader away from the viewpoint characters' impressions by asking a lot of rhetorical questions.  When he called my attention to this, I thought, by golly, he's right.  What I had considered to be a clever little stylistic device was apparently not only ineffective, but distracting.
• Finally, my BE confirmed that nagging hunch that has been lurking in the back of my mind for some time.  My story would benefit from less viewpoints, and more honed central storyline(s).  And what's more, he wanted to see more of two of my ancillary characters - Rosemarie and Marcus - and thought that their stories could actually carry the novel, with Lila being more clearly defined as the antogonist.  I still have not completely worked out how to go about this shift in narrative vantage points, but one thing I do know is that the change feels right.

One thing has become crystal clear to me by now - this "revision" process is turning into a full blown "re-write."  Anything less would be creating a Frankenstein of a novel; cobbling together new passages and chapters and inserting them into what I already have would doubtlessly create a schism in flow and style (I feel I've grown so much as a writer in these past few months from taking in people's comments, and I'd like to think this will be reflected in my future writing.)  

So now I know what I have to do ... write a whole new book!!!