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Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Secrets

I've bemoaned my characters keeping secrets from me before and it happened again. This time my heroine was the culprit and she had two little bombshells for me.

With my heroes and heroines, I've gotten used to knowing something was in their backgrounds that impacted their lives, but not knowing exactly what it was. That I can work with. I can foreshadow as I write because I know it's there, I'm just in the dark as to what--precisely--the problem is. What I hate is when they don't give me anything.

In all fairness, I was aware something bothered her and I even knew what it was, so the first bombshell she dropped shouldn't have been a hit. I should have known that her issue extended into everything she did. Unfortunately, I got hung up on how much she didn't like this one aspect of her job and figured she only went through the motions on this unimportant requirement. That wasn't right at all. Liza might not like it, but she wants to be the best and that means every facet, no matter how she personally feels about it. This was a head-thunk moment for me and I swear you could have seen a light bulb go off above my head when I finally got it.

Bombshell number 2 is a different story.

If I complained to Liza about this, she'd probably shrug and say it's not her fault that I didn't think about this part of her personality. She'd tell me that would have revealed it if I'd poked just a little bit. She's not wrong, but this wasn't something that I realized needed to be poked at. How can I ask the right questions if I'm not getting any hints?

But it completely made sense once she revealed it to me.

This type of thing always frustrates me, but what really has me kicking myself is that when she finally shared bombshell 1, bombshell 2 still didn't occur to me. They're intertwined and I should have figured out the second part on my own. I didn't.

Now if I can get it all on the page and convey it smoothly, things will be good. I'm not sure I'm there yet, but I can revise until I have it right.