“Earthly Tents” (or the story formerly known as “Ripped Up” and “Broken”) is coming along. One of the most important things I’ve learned recently is not to withhold key information about your main characters from your readers. Details like a character having been divorced really affect the way a character acts and perceives the world and, just as importantly, details like that affect the way the reader sees and understands that character.That’s one of the biggest things I’ve learned recently, probably because it’s one of the biggest problems that exists in “Earthly Tents.” The reader doesn’t discover anything about Alan’s spiritual life until about page 11. The reader doesn’t learn a lot of details about Alan’s divorce or his kids until about pages 9 and 13 (and this is only a 14-page story). This is a problem because Alan’s children, divorce and spiritual life are his main motivations throughout the story, and the reader gains a deeper understanding of Alan through his words and actions during the story if they know those details up front.
Dr. Bailey taught us that it is usually good to somehow incorporate a thread of the story’s conflict into the very first paragraph of the story. In my story the main conflict is Alan trying to cope with the loneliness and pain of his divorce (which we don’t even know about until page 6).
I have to admit, though, this has been a fun problem to fix. On Monday I sat down on the floor of my dorm room with Scotch tape and scissors and a copy of the latest draft of “Ripped Up” (Draft 7, the seventh time Mrs. Miller has fallen off that stool in her kitchen. Rob’s told me I need to stop breaking that poor old woman’s ankle). I started cutting out paragraphs and rearranging the details in my story, and I created a new draft. I’m going to use this draft to do a rewrite, smoothing the transitions between the scissored sentences, adding extra details and basically just revising the piece again. The process is really exciting because once I get done with this rewrite, the story is going to be noticeably better.
