The death struggle

First I have to say how much I love the way James Scott Bell talks about writing and that I highly recommend his books. He explains things in a way that click with me.

One of the things he like to talk about is the death struggle. This is the conflict that locks the protagonist and the antagonist together for the length of the story. Now literary/character driven writers need not call foul. This struggle isn't always a physical death. It can also be psychological (think Holden Caufield or any romance novel) or professional (think police/lawyer stories, even mother trying to help/rescue her child). And yes a story can be more than one, which brings me to my point.

I'll let Mr. Bell explain the rest to you himself if you check out his books. I just want to introduce the concepts so I can brag about how my book is going to be ALL THREE!

Physical Death
Circumstances make the antagonist thin my MC is dangerous to him, so he tries to get rid of danger by killing the MC.

Psychological Death
MC has someone in his life that he doesn't want to disappoint, in part because he feels he owes this person a debt and in part b/c he is desperately seeking this person's approval so he can feel like he belongs. If my MC can't figure the problems of the book out to help this person, he will die a little inside.

Professional Death
This one is a bit of a stretch and might be more applicable in future books with this MC. Ties into the psychological death above. He can view his relationship with the person he doesn't want to disappoint as like a job with duties and responsibilities he can't ignore. If he does ignore them he'll have failed (died) at his "profession."

So my book should be super exciting and emotionally moving, as well as complex, right? We will see.

Stuck

I was doing really with my revision for awhile. I studied my story and identified things to move around to make it more exciting and character relationships and conflict to mine to make it more meaningful. I went through scene by scene and figured out how to make it better or if it should be cut, moved or combines with other scenes. I rewrote my synopsis several times, adding new ideas as I thought of them and determining how to fit them in. I started the rewrite getting all the way through the first major change in my main character's life.

And now I'm stuck. I could say that my job is sucking out any extra energy I might have to devote to creative endeavors. I could say that I went into crunch time for the show that I was in recently and had practice almost every night.

But the truth is that those are just excuses.

I think I'm afraid that because I've been having some trouble with these scenes, I'm going to have to rewrite them again. And the whole point of all the work I've done already is to avoid unnecessary rewrites.

But this is stupid. I've been careful and I know that some more revision will be necessary anyway--even if I breezed through these scenes it would be--and if I need to do more to make it better than that's just what I'll have to do.
I need to write through it. The scene I am on will not only deepen the characters in it, there is a major thing that happens that seems relatively small at the time, but actually sets the major conflict of the book in motion. And soon I will get to the point of no return, where my protagonist is locked into mortal battle with the antagonist.

I just need to immerse myself again and then everything else should follow.

Revision: Plan of Attack

I went to a writer's conference in March and the main goal that I came away with was to be more methodical with my revision. I can't tell you the number of times that I had a new idea that changed everything in the middle of a revision thus necessitating a revision of the revision. I have no desire to rewrite large portions of my novel multiple times. I don't want to be unrealistic--some of that is bound to happen, but my goal was to keep it to a minimum.

So then I came up with a "Plan of Attack." I'm hoping that I can use it in the future as well, keeping in mind that other books might need different things.

PLOT/GENERAL
1. Go through scene by scene and update outline, also note scene type, objective and result. Using this, identify 10 weakest scenes and think of ways to improve them, combine them or cut them.
2. Find places where character/theme can be explored. Map out how main character (MC) will change over the course of the book and match to these scenes and more if necessary.
3. Identify places to strengthen signpost scenes. (See work of James Scott Bell for more info)
4. Identify major clues and connections and when they happen. Map them out and make sure they make sense and are in the right order.

CHARACTER WORK
1. What are each character's goals and how might that add to tension/conflict with MC, even friends and allies
2. Look @ MC relationships with other characters, esp ones that change and make sure that progress makes sense
3. Identify scenes that may need major work

SCENE WORK
1. Based on previous work put all scenes in order
2. Cut weak/unnecessary scenes, or outline how to make them stronger
3. Following clue, theme and character maps revise scenes as necessary

VOICE WORK
1. Imagine random moments in the book and write snippets of MC thoughts, giving them as much attitude as possible. Get at least 20 to 30 of these.
2. Match to appropriate scenes and work in
3. Go through all scenes, heightening the attitude of MC voice

After major revisions

DIALOGUE WORK
(Review various exercises to help)

EXPOSITION/DESCRIPTION
1. Highlight all instances of description and find places where description should be added
2. For each, think of emotion/mood to evoke and use that as a lens to write/rewrite description

BIG MOMENTS
1. Identify 5 big moments and read them over.
2. Brainstorm 10 ways to heighten the moment
3. Pick the best and do it

FINAL TENSION AND POLISH
1. Throw all pages into the air
2. Pick one and find a way to increase tension on that page
3. Look at whole page and tighten language, etc.

That's a lot, isn't it? Is it overboard? Perhaps. I'm in the scene work, actual revision stage. Doing the previous steps already allowed me to move things around some to make story better.

Alot of this I've already done in past revisions, just not so systematically, but one thing that is new is the idea of voice snippets. I will definitely use this again as it really allowed me to capture my MC voice, without worrying about what is going on in the scene outside that moment.

I can do this. I will do this.