Beautiful Death

I've been running through several assignments with The Witch to improve my skills and Beautiful Death specifically. I really thought something wasn't quite right with the opening pages of BD, but I wasn't sure what. It reads a little stiff, a little flat, but I wasn't sure exactly what I needed to do. When BD didn't final in the FF&P contest, I had another confirmation that something wasn't quite right. But what? (I haven't received the critiques back yet.)

With the latest assignment, some lightbulbs are starting to go off. The first five pages are flat because there's no real emotion or feeling invoked in the reader via the lead. Isabella is a stone cold killer. She's not sympathetic, and most people probably wouldn't like her, either. I accomplished what I wanted on one hand (a female assassin like Edward in LKH's Anita Blake series) and shot myself in the foot with the other because my lead has all the appeal of a murderer.

So I'm working on this next assignment, and thinking, and something clicked. In the opening five pages, Isabella is faced with two killings: the human rebel and the shapeshifter who interferes. Thinking hard about this, and how I could add emotion, I thought specifically about how she might feel killing Sybil vs. the monster. HINT. Think about the premise. Think about her character arc and where she starts out.

People are good. Monsters are evil.

Would it really be so easy for her to kill a human, even if the Oracle told her Sybil was a criminal?

Wouldn't Isabella much rather fight the monster than the human? Why? Because she doesn't believe the monster has any human qualities. So how could she coldly and efficiently kill the human rebel? Hmm?

Gotcha. I think I just figured out how to a). add emotion and b). add angst and internal conflict while remaining true to the character (actually truer than I'm currently depicting her) and premise.