That being said, I'm starting over on Djinn: A Love Story. I have to. I'm about 100 pages into it and I'm realizing that I'm not excited about the story anymore. And if I"m not excited to finish writing it, I can't expect my readers to be excited to finish reading it.
I had to take a step back to see why I wasn't excited. What was wrong with the story?
Part of it was the tone. The feeling I was going for in this work wasn't coming across. The first section of the first chapter set it up nicely, but then it flopped after that. Plus, there is something wrong when a story is supposed to be about 15 chapters and I'm 100 pages in and not even finished with chapter 2. I mean, chapter 2 is where Mary meets the djini for the first time. Right at the beginning of the story, right? Wrong. She doesn't meet him for about 100 pages. That's far too long.
I had to stop and ask myself what this story was really about. I had a cast of 9 characters. I have widdled that down to 7. Also, the story was being viewed from all 9 characters. So, I'm going to limit this to about 3. Maybe 4. But there are certainly 2 characters that I don't need to use their perspective, or at least limit their perspective.
The novel is split into days rather than chapters, which I love. Chapter One is actually titled Day One in the novel. Day One is about 60 pages long. The reason it's so long is because I offer seven different perspectives, seven different lives. Is it necessary? No. Not really. Same with Day Two. I was about 40 pages in and I'm realizing I'm bored with it.
So, yesterday, I started over. I don't ever throw any of my work out. It's saved. But it's no longer my work in progress. Now that I've done this, the story will move along at a much better pace. The way I was headed, I'd have written a 1,000 page book (or longer). There is nothing wrong with a book that long. I've read plenty of them. When they are done well, they are enthralling, entertaining, and thought provoking. The problem is that I don't think everything I was plunking down in there was all that entertaining. Interesting, yes. Important to the story...not really.
I don't need to show Mary's husband in his day job to get a feel for his character. He can come home and tell her about his day. We can see in his face that he's hiding something. And doesn't it make it more interesting if the reader doesn't know exactly what he's hiding, if the reader is left in the dark just as much as Mary? One thing I loved about reading Jane Austen books when I was in college was that technique she uses of Free Indirect discourse. The point is, she doesn't use it with all her characters. There are some characters who remain a complete mystery so the reader is left to wonder along with the main character at what is really happening. Those who don't observe the craft but enjoy reading would be entertained and held in suspense while those who pay attention to the finer details may be impressed with her skill and how clever she was to write it in this way.
So, tone. To create the right tone, to queue the reader into the fact that they are in one character's perspective without needing to say so, all these things are done through tone. When I'm writing in the Djini's perspective, I work mostly in fragments to show how differently he sees our world. With Mary, I hardly use fragments. She's just like us. Someone to whom you can relate. Her daughter is special, in a very special way, and Mary refuses to see it. I had written the story before where the reader sees everything the daughter sees and knows what the daughter is thinking. Now it will be a mystery. I'll lose some of the amazing scenes I'd written for her, but the story will be better for losing them.
Okay, so I've rambled on long enough. At first, I didn't succeed with creating the right tone, the right flow for my story. I'm trying, trying again. And it may not be the last time I start over on this one. When I wrote Breaking Threshholds, I started completely over about 20 times. Once, with that one, I started over after being about 400 pages into the novel. It happens. But it's worth it in the end.
Until next time...unpleasant dreams.