Days 8-11: Realizing You Started Wrong

I've been pretty quiet the past few days, in terms of blogging here. Part of that is because I finally went back to work now that the snow has stopped. The other part, the larger part, is because I realized that I started this book wrong. Luckily, I was only about 7,000 words in, but still. It was wrong.

After talking to Erika (my really wonderful crit partner), I spent a day brainstorming and figured out why it was wrong. And then I spent another few hours brainstorming how to fix it. The main issue was that my MC had no specific world-view/perspective/compulsion that made her act a certain way.

Let me explain that.

In Coldest Girl in Coldtown by Holly Black, the MC, Tana, wants her life to be normal, she wants to keep her friends safe, herself safe, her family safe. And every single one of her actions is fueled by that. She pretends that things are normal because she wants them to be normal. That's her compulsion. That's the reason she acts the way she does in the book. (DISCLAIMER: This is how I see Tana. Your view might be entirely different, and that's totally okay.)

But my MC didn't have a reason for acting the way she was acting. At least, not one that tied into her general character arc. So I had to rework that. Which meant backtracking my timeline and starting the book hours earlier than it was currently starting. Which meant brainstorming an entirely new scene/chapter to introduce her perspective/compulsion and give her better motivation to drive her through the beginning of the book.

I hope it does that anyway.

So that's what I've been working on. So far, I've rewritten the first chapter, sent it to Erika, and then rewrote it again with her edits and my own edits when I realized that her some of motivation needed to be based on a part of her life that she hated but had no control over.

Today, I started a new chapter two (because apparently, the party that the book originally opened with wasn't the party that my MC was supposed to be attending). I still have my old Chapter One and Two hanging around because I haven't decided yet how much of them I'm going to delete. Parts of them are still workable, I think. Possibly. But that's why the word count still looks like it's going up. I haven't actually deleted anything...yet.

It just goes to show that often, for me at least, writing is not a linear process. I don't ever just write chapter 1, then chapter 2, then chapter 3, and so on. I write chapter one, then chapter two, then make those chapters three and four and go back to write a new chapter one and a new chapter two.

So, that's where I am.

Words written today: 614
Words written total: 12,336
Chapter Written: Worked on new Chapter 2