Saturday, September 10, 2011

On Editing

A caught-in-the-middle sci fi novel of mine, The Two Faces of the Sun, is going in a drawer for a while.

Yes, the plot is finished, yes, I know what's going to happen, yes, I know that it's literally been eight fünkeing years since protagonists Francine's very first amnesiac-ridden incarnation popped into my head... but I'm not confidant with my portrayal of my characters in it.

Why?

My characters seem like exaggerations of themselves.
Fran seems like too much of a runaway crybaby, an annoying one, at that, and Johnny seems too manly and too philosophizing at the same time.

I have good plot development skills, but I think that I need real people skills too. How realistic are antagonist, Samuel, mentor Zophia, love interest Johnny and Fran? How do real meek and shy people act under that sort of stress? What do I need to do as a writer to make this story seem real? Because, believe me, my characters in this story are looking less and less realistic the more I look at them...

...but the seeds of something wonderful are still gestating...

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