You’d think by now that I would know if I’m worried about a section of story when I give it to someone to read, I know I should have spent more time to get it right. Sure enough, one of my first readers ranted about the climax, which I thought was going to be a problem. So I spent a chunk of time today reworking and reworking and reworking the penultimate chapter.
There are other sections I still need to edit, and I still have to hear from my other primary reader, but I do feel better about the scene now. It was one of those things where I knew it didn’t work, but when I first wrote it, I didn’t know how to make it work. I still wasn’t sure today. I had to do things to my character I didn’t want to. It was hard. I hope my readers like it now.
Words written today: 1,574
Words written this month: 15,007
Words written 2017: 145,406
Average words/day 2017: 696
Books completed 2017: 2 (plus 1 novella)
Pages read today: 0
Books read 2017: ?
Days until school starts: 31
One of my biggest issues with my writing before the gay romances was me not wanting to really HURT or even merely CHALLENGE my characters (one I felt uncomfortable doing, the other I didn’t really know how to do), so I get you on not wanting to do something to your characters. I still go through it sometimes, but now it’s mostly a matter of me sitting down and forcing myself to face the fact that my character must somehow suffer–and FIGHT that suffering–in order to make a good story.
Yeah, in this case, it was forcing her to make a hard choice, and I really didn’t want to.
I’m glad I’m not the only one who’s struggled with this. 🙂
That sounds awful but necessary. I’m going to take a little advice from Ashe’s comment and make my character fight a bit. I’m pretty sure I haven’t done that yet.
Conflict is the hardest! We create characters that we like, so of course we don’t want them to get hurt. (Except when we do. I can be really sadistic to me secondary characters!)
Good luck with yours!
Nope, they never are … although, they can lead to some very interesting adventures though! 😀
Sadly, I do not need adventures in my writing! ?