mad scientist 13

Mad Sceintist 13
What I’m struggling with today is something that I thought yesterday and that I’ve been mulling over since. Mulling is the writer way. Mull while you eat your Frosted Flakes (an admission that I eat kid’s cereal for breakfast), take your shower, walk your dog, exercise or avoid exercise, and so on. Mull, mull, mull. Most writers are mullers.

But back to the point. My main character changes but I don’t really have my secondary character changing. She is supporting my main character but that’s not good enough.

This is definitely analysis here but I am in revision stage so I need to stand back in places.
1. I need to look for places to make my main character’s CHANGING more dramatic.
2. I need to look at secondary characters and make them change more.

There are two concerns here. One is with narrative structure, that arc of character that people are always going on about and how it influences the arc of the story. The other is about characters, the heart of fiction. Really. If people don’t care about your characters, then, in the words of movie Mafiosos, “Forget about it.”

That was why, earlier, it worried me so much when I felt my characters didn’t have heart, another way of saying they didn’t feel flesh and blood yet.

So for the sake of story and character I need to clarify the changes that they go through in this story. I figured out one change that wasn’t there before yesterday and today I’m going to go back through the first hundred pages I’ve revised and see if I can make that change work.

Also, if it does then it needs to be “in” the manuscript from the beginning. Any change made on p. 80 needs to connect to p.1.