It’s Worth It

At some point you have to ask yourself a question.  The question is what am I trying to accomplish?  When you set out to finish your project, did you just want to make something and put it out there?  Meaning, the completion was more important than the execution of it all?  Or are you trying to craft some sort of masterpiece?  Somewhere in  the middle?  I’m trying to make a great story that is worth your time.  I just don’t it to be done and be out there.  If you spend a year plus on a project and then when you think it’s done, realize that things aren’t set, but still work… do you just let it lie?  I couldn’t.

Truth be told the version of the book I completed a couple of months ago, was pretty solid I think.  As a whole it was there and accessible, but it was flat on the point of some of the character development.  So I added two scenes in the book and a new page, but the real fun was editing the final product.

I had these two new scenes I thought were perfect and answered all of the my problems.  When I put them in to the story they just felt really weird.  Like the book lost  all of its tone and early creepy vibe it had carried and really was the book I was trying to make.

I went through about 5 versions of the opening, and bombarded my friends and wife with updates just about every day.  It just wasn’t working.  But then finally, I had a nice conversation with my wife and then Stephen McCranie when it finally happened.  My wife called out just how much everything was not working and felt jumbled.  She didn’t like the new version much, though she did like the new scenes and she recommended moving things around once more.  Stephen and I rolled around the ideas and the picture became clear.

Stephen has a process of scene writing that I thought was helpful.  When you think of a scene the biggest question is what is it saying and why. So when I applied that, it became apparent that I wanted the opening scenes to tell us: who Chloe is and what she cares about, what happened that changed everything and the consequences of the thing that happened.  In three scenes the story is laid out and done. 

I used to be a film editor and I trained myself how to take the materials I was given and assemble it into something comphrehensible that has some sort of sense to it.  It is a fun act of discovery when you move a piece of dialogue into a different place and things shift in tone and suddenly it all works.  I finally got to that point.  And all the wrestling was worth it.  This book is really, really working in my opinion and others who have read it who had their concerns initially.

Don’t rush past something when you  know  it isn’t working.  Trust your story instincts and work it and move it until it goes in the direction you hoped it would.  It’s worth it.

I wanted to share the inked pages of what the book’s beginning will be now.  I will be adding colors over the next couple weeks.  All trying to get the story right.  The point of this new scene is to introduce Chloe to us and set up some of the relationships.  Hope up like them.