A while back, I wrote a post on relationships, based on what I’d seen. At the time I wrote it, I’d been kicking around several thoughts regarding my current main couple, Annie and Nicholas from Shining Armor.
Today, I sat down to work on the editing and everything I’d written in my blog began to show up in my story. I don’t mean that I plotted out the various aspects and carefully wrote in the different levels. No. That’s too close to lecturing for me.
It’s just that when I started editing, I realized that some elements I’d stuck into an earlier revision were actually pretty lame. I had used them to create intimacy, but all I ended up doing was creating a synthetic intimacy that didn’t fit with the characters and their actions. The romance didn’t feel real this time around.
So, I re-worked the dialogue and took several elements out, thinking for sure that I would end up with a very short scene. Instead, I ended up with a conversation that moved the plot further, added to characterization depth, and, hopefully, improved some serious problems that existed in the previous version, such as my heroine’s intelligence (or lack thereof). This conversation is longer than the piece I cut, but moves faster. And it gets rid of a very silly element that always made me uncomfortable.
Taking out this element means major re-writes later in the story, but I feel much more comfortable with the way the story is flowing now. Looking forward to seeing what I end up with.
Photo by Hiroshi Ishii
Amy Keeley 