Thursday, February 26, 2009

Sudden inspiration

Sometimes, characters are just difficult. My heroine had been holding out on me. On the umpteenth time of reading my revision letter, I suddenly realised the problem and how she had to grow at the end, and why therefore as it currently stood, the ending felt flat.

Why do I hate opening my veins and bleeding on the page when I know it is what the story requires. The average reader will only get 10% of the emotion I feel. So I may be in floods of tears, bereft, wrung out and the average reader will go meh, okay. But knowing that does not necessarily mean I readily open my veins. It just means that I know I need to. And now I know why. Emotional stakes must be sky high. The heroine can not feel that she can just take up her old life. And she must be prepared to sacrifice something.

In other news:
Has an owl eaten the mole? My youngest heard the tawny owl in the back garden a few night ago. Tawny owls' favourite food is moles. Or he may have packed his bags and moved to greener pastures. In any case, no new molehills. The traps were undisturbed and so I have removed them. But they are in the greenhouse, ready for the next invasion.

2 comments:

Judy Jarvie said...

Sounds like you've cracked it Michelle. Go bleed!
I am keeping quiet on the m word. Don't want to jinx things.

Cheryl St.John said...

I never think about how long a scene is (your last post) now that I think on it. What I catch myself at is writing more scenes in one character's POV than the other's and then I realize I don't know that character well enough and have to go back and remedy that.