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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
The possibilities include:<\/p>\n
–placing the conflict between what she feels and what everyone expects her to feel right\u00a0 in the opening paragraph, or at least page, which will make my opening stronger<\/p>\n
–a more powerful emotional component to the quest on which she embarks (there is a good reason for the anger)<\/p>\n
–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<\/p>\n
–a more wrenching but satisfying emotional change for the MC when she finally lets go of the anger<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n