Going Back

I've always had a special fondness for my novella, Second Chance. I never re-read it after it was published, but my memories of it were good. It never sold and I never promoted it (for reasons I outlined in my previous post). Yesterday I began pondering "fixing" it. I'm not ready to start something new and it would be great to move some of my back catalog.

I opened the doc and immediately recognized that the opening isn't ideal. An intriguing opening is essential, because most potential book buyers will read a book's preview before making a purchasing decision. I certainly do. I can fix it, but I haven't thought much about how to do that yet. At this point I'm more interested in reacquainting myself with the story.

I also fell into the same trap that I did with my second novel, for which an agent informed me that my main character wasn't likeable. This one is a bit different, though, because the MC starts out being supremely cynical, then later morphs into a regular person. There's an obvious reason for that, but starting out with an unlikable main character is the kiss of death. It's difficult for me to portray someone trapped in a hopeless, dead-end situation and not make her cynical. What's she supposed to do ~ break down in tears every day? Changing this is going to be a challenge.

The second thing I noticed was an overuse of profanity. I'm obviously not against profanity or I wouldn't have used it in the first place, and sorry, but replacing an exclamation like "Fuck!" to "Fiddlesticks!" is nuts, That said, though I'm not writing for a Christian audience, too much profanity can be off-putting.

And what I considered a "cute" running joke at the time about everyone in her new town being related to everyone else turned into a tired cliche. I notice that I began running out of familial relationships and starting using terms like "his aunt's second husband's nephew's wife". While I like the concept as a whole, I went too far overboard with it. (I know I was amusing myself at the time, but I could have still done that and then deleted!)

On the plus side, once the story gets moving, my dialogue and setting descriptions are quite fabulous. I was impressed. I'm consistently great with dialogue, but settings are my downfall. My writing mind, I guess, doesn't think in terms of settings. I'm too focused on what's going on in the MC's head. Maybe the main character settling in an unfamiliar town helped. Another plus is that the supporting characters are appropriately quirky.

Then comes my big conundrum. It's one thing to name a song; but a title alone is sterile. And what if the reader doesn't even know the song? What resonance would its title have? I've determined that I'm going to need to describe the essence of the song in my own words and demonstrate its effect on the person hearing it. See, songs are rather crucial to the story, since it completely revolves around live music performances. I'm not just throwing in songs "because". In one instance a character is sending a veiled message to someone by choosing to sing a particular song onstage. The lyrics would drive a nail through that message, but alas, that's just not in the cards.

Oh, one more thing: I think the cover will need to be changed. It's not that I don't like it, but I suppose it screams "western movie" or God forbid, "romance". 

If I hated this book the way I hated Radio Crazy, revising it would be excruciating. But I really like this story! I want to make it shine and also make it sell. Silly or not, I'm excited about the rework.