I've been pecking away at some edits of On a Twisted Tree after Tiger had a pass at it. Today I got into the first substantial ripping apart of scenes, where Tiger noted some pacing issues. I spent a good two and a half hours on two scenes, complete with much screaming and hair-tearing. Fortunately these scenes seem to be the biggest issue in the entire book, so if I get them patched up, the rest should (might) be a bit easier.
There are some issues with some secondary characters, and I don't know if I'm too mentally tired to deal with them or what, but I just can't figure out how to fix them. There's one character in particular who's kind of featureless. He's always been that way in my mind, so I have a hard time figuring him out enough to put him on paper. I'll have to come back to him, I suppose. I hate when that happens because characterization is one thing I'm generally very good at.
So, now that I've exhausted myself with my own edits, I'm about to dive into Natania Barron's Pilgrim of the Sky. I saw a very early version of it but haven't seen it in quite some time, so I'm excited to get to read it.
Yeah, I'm being the latecomer... but I've always found it helps to think about *why* the minor character is there. If you're not sure, you might want to just cut them out or have another character pick up their role. If they are important, think about traits they could have that would add to the conflict potential and/or enhance their role. Good luck!
ReplyDeleteYou'll figure it out! But don't just let it go because even those extra characters are important. I think I did a post on that somewhere. Don't know if it's helpful or not, but let me look up the link. I don't usually "advertise" my posts, but it sounded so appropriate...
ReplyDeletehttp://paranormalpointofview.blogspot.com/2011/01/complete-characters.html