Ah, I Like When Things Work

You know all that stuff I wrote about in my previous post? You know, how I had to cut one chapter into two and combine two other chapters into one and delete a whole bunch of extraneous stuff? It's done.

Because I had to delete most of Chapter Three, I wound up having to cut about 1700 words, which killed me. I managed to put about 450 of them back just in having to transition the beginning of Chapter Three into the beginning of Chapter Four and then going back and making sure it all worked. So the total word loss was 1250 and change, which was still pretty traumatic, not gonna lie.

I suppose it's my own fault, though, for writing up stuff I didn't need.

But even though losing all of those words was traumatic, I like the beginning few chapters so much better now that all the drama is gone! It flows together better, and I don't feel like I'm interrupting the actual storyline with pointless drama.

So. Score one for change.

Change is a Good Thing ... Sometimes.

Remember what I said before about change being necessary in the writing process? Yeah. It still stands.

I’ve thought of a workaround for my problem in the beginning of The Witch of November, namely the whole bunch of drama that ultimately goes nowhere. And that fix (at least I hope it’s a fix!) involved lots and lots of change.

Step One was to split Chapter Two into two separate chapters (because that shit was freakin’ long). So now instead of ghosts and 911 calls and ambulances and hospitals and doctors, it’s ghosts and 911 calls and ambulances. The hospitals and doctors come later, in the new Chapter Three.

Step Two was a complete rewrite. I decided to take out all indications that Charlie had been physically attacked. No bruises, no bumps, nothing. The kid is just unconscious. That step was both practical and creative: practical because it cuts out the whole “we have a person attacking kids in an abandoned house” line of thinking for the adults, thereby cutting the police investigation out of the story entirely, and creative because it’s more mysterious to have Charlie perfectly fine one minute and in some kind of ghost-spell-induced coma the next.

I also had Allie refrain from telling the paramedics that she’d seen the ghost standing over Charlie. The way I’d had the story originally, the adults figured Allie had seen Charlie being attacked and, in her trauma, confused the town legend with what she actually saw. This way, if she doesn’t tell them she saw anything, they have no reason to question her. Charlie could have fallen in the house, hit his head, or he could have just come down with some bizarre illness like on an episode of House for all they know.

And yes, Allie struggles with keeping information from the adults that could help her friend, but she’s old enough to know that a group of doctors and concerned parents are not exactly going to believe, “The ghost did it!” coming out of the mouth of a hysterical child.

Step Three is combining and rewriting my old Chapters Three and Four. Most of the old Chapter Three no longer applies, since that was when the detectives come to interview Allie. So that all has to just get deleted, which will severely cut into my word count (sadness!).

I’m hoping it’ll flow better now that the necessary-but-unnecessary drama is out of the story. It was necessary because of the way I’d set things up, but it wasn’t central to the premise. And because it wasn’t central, it had no real resolution: clearly the police were not going to find Charlie’s attacker since the attacker was a ghost. So why introduce a plot point you can’t resolve? Out it had to go.

So, yeah. I am cautiously optimistic that I’ll start liking it a lot better now.

More Frustration

For a couple of months now, I've been stuck on the first few chapters of The Witch of November, and I think I've finally figured out my problem: I feel like the story's getting bogged down with the drama.

Unfortunately the drama is kind of necessary. See, what happens is this: Charlie hides in the Witch's house to annoy Allie. By the time Allie finds him, he's unconscious and the Witch herself is standing over him. Allie then has to call for an ambulance because she can't wake Charlie up and it goes from there. I also have the police questioning Allie about what happened (because he'd been strangled) and then her parents questioning her as well.

I suppose I could take out the stuff with the police but I truly believe that the police would be involved. I figure Allie's 911 call would have alerted the police and they would certainly want to question a little girl if they found that a young boy had been beaten up and strangled and she was the only witness.

I also suppose I could change it so that Charlie isn't quite so hurt, thereby taking out the ambulance and police entirely, but Charlie's attack is Allie's big motivator. It's because she's trying to save Charlie that she gathers the courage to explore the Witch's house.

See, Allie is kind of a scaredy-cat. She's the kind of kid who slept with a nightlight until the fourth grade. She's that kid who hears the other kids say, "Hey, let's go to the climbing rock!" and thinks of all the broken bones they could get if they fell off the climbing rock. Allie would never go into a haunted building where her best friend had been attacked unless she had a really good reason. My reason right now: trying to find a way to bring Charlie out of his coma.

So where do I go from here? I'm not quite sure. I suppose I could think of something else that could get Allie to face her fears but really, the Charlie-in-the-hospital drama is kind of essential to the conceit of my story, here.

I think I'll try to trim down the calling-for-the-ambulance, getting-to-the-hospital chapter (it's by far my longest so I'm sure I can find ways to cut it) and then go from there.

Cross your fingers for me, please? Because I really don't feel like rewriting the whole first like, ten chapters of my novel.