When I started going through the first
draft of my novel, ‘Lonely Susan’ I got stuck my protagonist’s first
appearance. The first time your main character appears is fairly important
(just to understate things) and I knew that Susan’s first showing just wasn’t
good enough. However, I just couldn’t come up with anything better.
I sat at the computer for, what seemed
like, hours with the section of the story before me, I would go to write
something, then just stop not happy with what I was about to write. I tried
leaving it for a week or so, but the result was just the same. I didn’t matter
how hard I tried, I just could not edit what was there in front of me.
It’s just one paragraph, a few sentences,
but I could not get anywhere with trying to change what I wrote. Then thought
came to me, don’t try and change anything, just wright it all over again. So
that is what I decided to do.
Starting with a blank page, I just wrote
the little scene again from scratch.
Here is the original:
He gazed down at the
most beautiful face he had ever seen. Instead of rotting bones, a young lady
lay in the box as though dreaming. She had shoulder length red hair and wore a
snuggly fitting jumpsuit. Rod could have stared forever at the vision that lay
before him, had it not been for his father.
Here
is the new version:
Rod hesitated as he
looked down, expecting a rotted corpse. Instead he gazed upon a smooth face of
almost pure white skin belonging to a young woman what seemed to be peacefully asleep.
Her closed eyes had long lashes, and thick red browse start against the light
skin that surrounded them. Her nose was long and straight with a sprinkling of
freckles, her mouth wide with pastel lips. She had thick red hair that was
pulled back into a pony tail that was swathed over her right shoulder. Rod felt
he could just stare at her face forever.
I think it worked!
Let me know what you think.
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