Keep Calm...

I'm currently rewriting my NaNoWriMo novel from last year - Sea Fever.

At the time, I wrote it because the idea had been hanging around in my head for years, taking up valuable space, and I figured that if I just gave it a month is would be happy, satisfied, and leave me be. After all, it's a YA, paranormal murder mystery. I'm a contemporary women's fiction kind of a gal. It was just a fun side project for thirty days.

Fast forward eight months, and the situation's slightly different. With my agent turning down my latest women's fic offering, maybe it is time to look for something different. And heaven knows I needed something fun to work on for a while.

So I pulled out Sea Fever again. I did some more world building and research to beef it up. I started idly outlining sequels, making it the first in a series, although still a stand alone novel in its own right. I workshopped the characters, and their journeys.

I started the actual revision and...

... found it really needed to be in first person, not third.

It's a lot of work. The first draft had two POV characters; taking it down to one means I have to find a way to incorporate all the things that the second character saw and thought and felt into the Stella's narrative.

And, yes, I'm aware that Stella was supposed to get a roasting from Dylan yesterday. This is why that's delayed.

But it works better in Stella's first person POV. I'm only a couple of scenes in and I can see that already.

And I'm excited about the story. About all of it.

I'm writing on, but less calmly. And that's fine by me.

A roast, according to Wikipedia, is ‘an event in which an individual is subjected to a public presentation of comedic insults, praise, outlandish true and untrue stories, and heartwarming tributes, the implication being that the roastee is able to take the jokes in good humor and not as serious criticism or insult, and therefore, show their good nature.’


Whereas I’m more used to the meat and veg with gravy version, a comedy roast, it occurs to me, might be a fantastic way to get to know your characters. After all, what shows a person more clearly than their friends and families recollections and stories of them? It’s all about what they’ve done, or in the case of the untrue stories, could conceivably be imagined to do. And the only real way to show character in fiction is through action and reaction.

Anyway, it’s a theory. And, to see if it holds up, I thought I’d give it a try. Starting next Sunday, with the protagonist of my current novel-in-revision, Stella Fortune, as seen by her sometime best friend, Dylan Albright.

And yes, I imagine some of the jokes might be about her name.