One of my *sisters* read my manuscript, GREYSKIN, recently and gave me awesome feedback (as always), but one thing really stood out to me as most important: I've been robbing my readers. Well, future, potential readers.
My protagonist, Charlie, is a sixteen-year-old girl. She gets thrust into some pretty heavy stuff and she ends up having to go at it alone. My problem was that I was having other characters relay information to her, and I had way too much awesome stuff happening off screen. I kept thinking, she's a teen, her parents keep this stuff from her to protect her. This is an adult situation, she wouldn't know this stuff. She wouldn't be able to handle it, or discover it for herself.
But I was totally wrong. I was thinking with my mom-head and not my inner teen. Not my inner Charlie. Charlie can totally do this! She can handle that! She would so easily figure that out herself! Now that it's been pointed out to me, it's so blatantly obvious. It's embarrassing, really. Hopefully, I can save you some embarrassment.
My Sister shared this great link on author Janice Hardy's blog:http://storyflip.blogspot.com/2010/06/re-write-wednesday-telling-yourself-to.html and I wanted to pass it on to you.
Think to yourself: would this scene be better if I dramatized it? If the narrator saw it first hand? is it possible for her to discover this herself instead of through a third party?
If yes, do it! happy re-writing!
4 comments:
Sounds like a plan! Can't wait to see the changes! And what a great idea.
drats. and i was hoping you might be interested in becoming critique partners. oh, well...
i once got into a difficult situation with my WIP characters. iwas stymied, stuck. how in the blood h3ll was i going to write myself out of the mess i'd gotten myself into?
once i'd calmed down and let my characters talk to me, i realized that they were perfectly capable of handling the situation. all i had to do was to Get Out of the Way and let them do so. (http://fivecats.livejournal.com/201335.html)
trust yourself. trust your characters.
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Thanks for commenting on my first five lines over at Adventures. It's nice to get a fresh perspective on my manuscript.
Thanks for stopping by, Julie! I love your entry and I hope I helped a tiny bit. Best of luck with it!
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