Writing and Learning

Well, I certainly did not intend for a month to pass but it has and woosh it was gone.

 I have been re-writing my little book and I continue to learn. I am taking a fiction class at the University and the learning curve is huge. Some things  in the tool box I was using naturally and just didn’t know it had a name but sooo many are tools that I didn’t know existed.

My book is directed at middle grade but it is still too tidy; too Pollyanna.

I am working to correct that and add more dimension. My protagonist has a gift of incredible faith but she is still a 12 to 13 year old girl. I have worked out most of that but I still have the problem of her not struggling enough to find solutions. She can see her Guardian Angel and she has chats with her but ultimately the decisions she makes are her own. I want to create tension without making it too complex.

I am also taking a look at the secondary characters and deciding if they are developed enough. The third character is Zach. He is best friends with the protagonist but other than going to the same youth group my reader doesn’t know much about him.

I am also reading the manuscript and looking for imagery, and narration. I have a lot of dialogue and internal dialogue but not a lot of narration.

I will never look at another book without thinking about how much the author thought and re-wrote and then re-wrote again. I have a much greater respect for writers!!

I can look at a chapter and see it as a scene and I can use the tools given to us in our fiction class and take it apart paragraph by paragraph. AMAZING!! I find metaphors, drawing the reader in with the senses, or painting a  scene and letting the reader discover through dialogue and implication what they want to reveal. I can tell where the writer builds tension or sets tone.

I haven’t had a lot of time to revise my own work but when I do I will have a lot of skills to make it a better manuscript.