![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Mar. 13th, 2004 12:41 pmI did, well, three rounds of editing on Flawless yesterday. Read through the paper and made changes, typed in the changes, and made a to-do list from the crits. The crits were very amusing since almost everyone loved it, and yet everyone had much the same problem with it, which they pointed out without making suggestions about. :) And it's not that I can't figure out what to do without suggestions, it's more that I like having people suggest things because it gets my brain into a creative stage again, and out of the editing brain, which is very right/wrong and no inbetweens.
I think, despite the handicap of having to come up with it all by myself, that what I want to do is set the story up a little more strongly as preparation for a fight--build up her certainty that this will end their friendship, etc, and let that show how she's as bad as he is, in her own way, that she has no idea who he is anymore. I kept trying to build up to the fight, but the guy I wrote, I don't think he really cares enough to fight, i think she's just projecting her own feelings about their personal relationship into the professional relationship. So I'll have to write it that way, and we'll see if I get accused of ducking the conflict again. Because it's first person, I can make it convincing that a) she'd think this and b) that he wouldn't act that way. She's all ready for throwing things and yelling, and he says, "That's great. I know how unhappy this has been making you." and she's just floored. Especially since one thing I've already set up in the story is that she still thinks of him as 25, and of herself as responsible and grown up. So I think the real conflict ends up being internal, when she realises that she's not as good at this as she thought she was, and that he's better than her.
We talked about this sort of change a little while ago, where the characters don't have to change at all if in the course of the story they notice that they've changed. I don't know if Nelly changes in the story, but she comes face to face with the idea that she hasn't changed in the past 10 years, that's for sure.
The one thing I can't decide for sure is how exactly it ends, but I've got some options. And I'm going to have to do some tweaking throughout to set it up right, but I think this is the story I want.
I think, despite the handicap of having to come up with it all by myself, that what I want to do is set the story up a little more strongly as preparation for a fight--build up her certainty that this will end their friendship, etc, and let that show how she's as bad as he is, in her own way, that she has no idea who he is anymore. I kept trying to build up to the fight, but the guy I wrote, I don't think he really cares enough to fight, i think she's just projecting her own feelings about their personal relationship into the professional relationship. So I'll have to write it that way, and we'll see if I get accused of ducking the conflict again. Because it's first person, I can make it convincing that a) she'd think this and b) that he wouldn't act that way. She's all ready for throwing things and yelling, and he says, "That's great. I know how unhappy this has been making you." and she's just floored. Especially since one thing I've already set up in the story is that she still thinks of him as 25, and of herself as responsible and grown up. So I think the real conflict ends up being internal, when she realises that she's not as good at this as she thought she was, and that he's better than her.
We talked about this sort of change a little while ago, where the characters don't have to change at all if in the course of the story they notice that they've changed. I don't know if Nelly changes in the story, but she comes face to face with the idea that she hasn't changed in the past 10 years, that's for sure.
The one thing I can't decide for sure is how exactly it ends, but I've got some options. And I'm going to have to do some tweaking throughout to set it up right, but I think this is the story I want.
