A short while ago I was lolling in a nice hot midday bath, drinking Diet Mountain Dew and reading an article about the galls of cynipid wasps, and a realization about my WIP came into my mind. I thought about it for a moment and became aware of several possibilities it raised.

The realization was that my MC’s primary emotion at the start of the novel, anger, is stronger than I have been portraying it, and that needs to be made clearer, earlier.

The possibilities include:

–placing the conflict between what she feels and what everyone expects her to feel right  in the opening paragraph, or at least page, which will make my opening stronger

–a more powerful emotional component to the quest on which she embarks (there is a good reason for the anger)

–a reason for turning her encounter with the other main character, in a pivotal scene that is the first big reversal in the story, into a physical attack rather than a conversation

–a more wrenching but satisfying emotional change for the MC when she finally lets go of the anger

I got out of the tub and got everything into my index card program asap. I’m calling it a bubblethrough rather than a breakthrough not because I was using bubble bath (I wasn’t), but because the realizations or ideas came to me not in a big flash but like a series of bubbles rising through a pond. Yay for the writer mind, working away down there.

Should you want to try the method, you’ll find the article in the December-January issue of Natural History. Or online. Mountain Dew optional.