Friday, March 19, 2010

revising

I have been revising my first draft. In my critique group we have been working through the Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook by Donald Maass. I have to admit that I'm not very excited about this month's assignment which is chapter 22 from the book.
The chapter says to go through your manuscript and find scenes that happen in the kitchen, car or shower. Then it says to get rid of them. If you can't get rid of them you have to add tension to the scene.
I'm still thinking about this assignment. Mostly I'm thinking about if I want to do the assignment (I don't.) I have to say I felt like this assignment was calling me out in a way. Of course there scenes that take place in kitchens and scenes that take place in cars in my story and part of me doesn't want to let them go. But it is possible that my inexperienced self has gotten it wrong. Maybe I just think the scene where my character confronts her Dad in the car when he comes to pick her up about why her stepbrother called her dad his dad is full of tension and reveals something about the way my character.
In reading this book there are all these examples from other books so as I read these little examples from other books I end up wanting to just read more books. So my stack of books to read is getting bigger.

3 comments:

Elana Johnson said...

Kitchen, car, or shower. Got it. And dangitall, I just wrote a scene in the kitchen and then one in the shower!!! Argh!

Unknown said...

It's not easy. I liked the scenes the people in my writing class rewrote. I thought they did a good job adding to the tension.

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