Going Deeper

Going Deeper

In general, I move fast in my first drafts. My focus is on the characters and the action, figuring out who is doing what and why. Sure, I’ve become more of a planner in recent years, but I’m still not much of one. If I have the BS2 half-filled in with a paragraph for most of the beats and a sentence for two or three more, I’m ready to go. Depth is for the second draft.

My first drafts are fairly clean as far as grammar and typos go, but they’re still a far cry from publishable for this reason.

I’m editing Joss/Queen’s Man (it’s the same book, and I tend to use the names interchangeably because I am like that) for…I think the third time? That sounds about right. I’m still adding depth.

Back in September I stuck a note on my computer that reminded me to “Go Deeper” and I tried to do that with the Joss edit I finished in December. Now I have the manuscript back with editing notes from my awesome editor, and guess what a lot of her notes are about?

Yep.

When you live with a character in your head for years, you get to know them pretty well. You manage to forget that no one else knows he’s not nearly as much of a jerk as he’s pretending to be. That they haven’t seen how upset he is by this or that when the story only shows his stoic face. You can even forget that no one knows how he got wrapped up in this world at all, because you never got around to editing that first novel he appeared in so they haven’t met him before.

Okay, maybe you wouldn’t forget those things, but I do. All the time. Joss Ravid first showed up in October of 2006. He’s full of razzle-dazzle and not a lot of honesty (he’s a Gemini–he’s honest, but not. It’s weird. He’s weird. Anyway.)

(And I just noted he has a fondness for singing Olivia Newton John songs at me. So guess what’s now in my head?)

Geez my brain is all over the place today.

Anyway. I think the whole point of this post is to complain that it’s really hard to let the reader see the truth through the POV of someone who’s lying to himself, and that’s what I’m trying to do. Joss says he doesn’t care about Kari’s Star, but he does. He says he can’t stand Zeke–but he actually likes him rather a lot. He says he can’t stand girls–but he’d die for Paige.

I think…I’m going to have Paige catch on. I think it’s the only way. Not on all of it, though. No, she’s a thirteen-year-old girl. She’ll spot that he really does like Zeke, and may or may not point it out to him, but while in her POV I can let the readers know Joss is in denial.

That’ll be enough to let them spot the other inconsistencies, I think. Anyone reading my story has to be pretty smart, yes?

4 thoughts on “Going Deeper”

  1. It’s so hard when YOU know the story but no one else does. You expect your readers to just know everything and they don’t. I’m guilty of this too, especially in CRACKED WORLD. I haven’t even attempted to edit that one yet because I know how much work I have to do on it. It’s also really hard to portray a character as sympathetic when you KNOW he’s really a good guy but damn it, everything he does shows he’s a bad guy. Or just a cold, insensitive prick who cares only about himself. (Caerbre, star of CRACKED WORLD, really is a good guy…he’s just, um, not nice.) Good luck with the edits!

  2. It IS hard. I needed to whine about it. But it’s the job, and it’s a great job–writing is the one area where I really love a challenge. (Everything else should be easy, darn it.)

  3. Okay, okay, we can work with this… 🙂

    You could also show some other inconsistencies that might serve as flagposts. For example:
    – Zeke calls Joss out on why he’s so protective of Paige and lets her do his hair despite all the “girl cootie” comments (or Zeke might just think about it — you have his POV already)
    – have Tabitha (or someone else) tell Paige about something Joss has done that clearly contradicts the impression Joss gives
    – have Joss make a flippant comment and then a moment later do something that clearly belies the comment
    – have Joss say something early on like “I could leave anytime I wanted to, I just haven’t yet” (I think there is a line like that somewhere…), which is a sort of dead giveaway

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