My writing days now are so infrequent that the most I ever get accomplished in a week are two scenes. Yes, this book is beginning to feel like a serial.
I'm getting impatient. Not only do I have miles to go to reach the end, but after that I'll need to completely revise Act One.
I suppose this new schedule isn't necessarily a bad thing. I know that a three-to-four-hour session will only allow me to write one scene, because that's just how slow I am, but at least I'm able to focus entirely on it until I get it right. That shows in my recent writing. These most recent scenes are very good.
While I take comfort in that, the fact remains that it could take several months to have this manuscript ready for publication. Bear in mind that the entirety of Act One was finished in only two months. I've been working on Act Two that long already, and there is so much left of the story yet to play out.
My new writing style, which boils down to "not rushing", has shown me the error of my previous ways. Novellas require a completely different approach from novels, but some elements should remain constant. Characterization, for one. In Act One, the main character's love interest is barely even a person. I wrote so little about him, he wasn't even a secondary character, but a movie extra. That mattered little to me at the time, because he was a device for moving the story along. Yet his lack of personality demands that a reader suspends disbelief and fills in the blanks herself to justify why the main character fell so hard for him in the first place. He could have just as easily been a silhouette on a wall.
At least I'll now have a do-over.
I don't know how I pick out the characters who will dominate. Second Chance is flush with characters, most of them only referenced once or twice in passing, but man, I sure had to come up with a bunch of names. I've never run into this before, but since Leah is weaving her way through a new career in music, she's naturally meeting a whole lot of people. I've honestly forgotten the names of most of them.
I think the ones I focused on serve as Leah's muses. In Chance, there's Burt, the hotel manager, who in some ways is almost a substitute father, subtly guiding her to places she resists going. He's her sounding board. Then in Nashville, it's superstar Paula Barnes. She tosses off lots of world-weary advice, which seems nonsensical at the time, but upon reflection makes total sense to Leah.
These two characters deserved fully-rounded personalities. They're frankly the most interesting of the lot. And they got that way purely by accident. When Leah first lands outside the town of Chance, the truck stop waitress tells her there's a hotel a few miles down the road. Leah, exhausted from her drive, decides that an overnight rest is in order, so she drives to the hotel to rent a room. That's where Burt first pops up. He was only meant to make a one-time appearance, but after Leah decides to stay in Chance a while, naturally the two of them get to know each other. Burt has a rare quality ~ well, a couple of rare qualities ~ but the most important one is his intuitiveness. He seems to know what Leah is feeling even before she knows it herself. And truthfully, I just like him. His name could easily be Warmth.
Paula Barnes was another accidental invention. Trust me when I say that I never have any idea where my stories are headed. I flash on an idea for a scene and as I'm writing it, it takes some off-the-wall turns. Leah is called back from her holiday at home with her mom. Every year Nashville puts on a huge extravaganza for New Year's, which features scores of musical acts. Her label guy tells her that one of the performers has canceled at the last minute and he's been able to slot Leah in.
When she shows up at the venue, she finds that the A&R guy hasn't lined up a band for her, while he assumes that her manager has taken care of that. (Her manager is out of state, too, for the holiday and knows nothing about this last-minute arrangement.) The A&R guy bolts to try to locate some players as she waits her turn backstage, becoming more and more frantic that she'll need to go out there with just her guitar, in front of thousands of people (not to mention the live stream). And yes, sure enough, the emcee introduces her, so out she goes. She starts strumming her song, gets through the first verse before a band pops up behind her and fills out the song.
Afterward, A&R guy explains that the band belongs to Paula Barnes and that she granted permission for them to be used. He tells Leah she needs to thank the superstar, which she knows, of course. (She's not a cretin, after all.) So she goes back to the dressing room and knocks on her door.
I had no picture of Paula Barnes, because the scene was a one-off. Then she started talking. What do you know? Paula is the most obscene hillbilly this side of the Appalachians. Even now, I have no idea what Paula looks like. I do know that she's over sixty, but she's not modeled after anyone real. She's unique. She "claims" people before they even know they've been claimed, and that's what happened to Leah. And she's stubborn. Her poor little assistant tries to do things for her, but she swats her away like a pesky mosquito. Paula calls Leah the next day out of the blue and informs her that she'll be picking her up to go shopping. Just like with Burt, Paula is the person Leah needs in her life at that moment. She's lost trying to sort out the tangles of her new career, and Paula becomes her anchor.
Again, this is a person I would welcome into my own life. Both Paula and Burt are endlessly interesting.
A few other characters get more than a line or two, but they are what they are and like the love interest in Act One, they serve to push the story along. The A&R guy is an enigma. At times he's fully supportive of Leah, yet he does things that undermine her career. He needs to exist because he "is" the record label to her.
Where I've missed the mark is in fleshing out both the love interests in Act One and in Act Two. At least the guy in Act Two possesses some quirks, but not enough to really turn him into a real person. Again, did she fall in love with him because he was just "there"? He needs to be given a personality. He could at least have a back story! I do this a lot and I don't know why. Maybe I need to fill out the cliched character sheet to get a handle on these two. (Just kidding; I don't go in for writerly gimmicks.)
Sometimes I invent characters who are awesome. Paula and Burt are much more interesting than Leah, unfortunately, but she's had her moments.
If anyone ever reads this novel, the standout will be Paula Barnes. I accept that. If all else fails, I do occasionally get something right.
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