Beautiful Death

I received the three contest critiques yesterday from FF&P On the Far Side. Overall, the comments were extremely helpful. I was relieved to see that two judges scored me very high: 147/150 and 148/150. So BD doesn't entirely suck like a Hoover. The third judge scored me much lower, 116/150, but made some very good comments. The biggest thing: unsympathetic heroine.

Ding, ding, ding!

Yep, I'm already on that. There were a few other problems that I picked up on between the three judges. The low judge was confused about the setting. I already made some notes to myself about fleshing out futuristic Athens in more detail (I gave myself a homework exercise on this). I tried really, really hard to cut backstory and heavy description, and I think I succeeded a little too well.

Also, some comments written in the ms pages pointed out some "overwriting" on my part. Where the words and phrases were more important than what happened. E.g. I was trying too hard. I think if I read those passages out loud, I'd probably wince and get all tongue-tied, a sure way to tell when I'm getting carried away.

The best comment of all that really made me smile:

"I would probably recognize this author's voice if I read it again."

Happy smiles!

My number one goal for the remaining days of 2005 is to finish the first draft of BD. I'm not going to stop and fix anything right now, although I'm making extensive notes and thinking of homework things to work on later. I must finish this first draft and work through some of my growing pains.

Meanwhile, I'll continue to work with the Witch and hopefully gain some better skills with MRUs, scene/sequel, etc. I still don't know where in Hades I'll send this thing once it's polished, but the more I play in this world, the more I love it.

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.