Writing and 'Declaration'

(Reposted from 11/27/07)

JLY and I somehow ended up talking today about how we write -- a topic that comes up every now and then. JLY is a perfectionist at heart. By the time she sends me a scene for SFA, it’s polished and consistent and ready to post.

I work in the almost exact opposite way. I can dash off a scene relatively quickly and send it to JLY with little hesitation. Of course, it’s only after I send it that I see the grammar mistakes, inconsistencies, and, in some fun cases, blatant disregard for the names of our secondary characters—if Sariil is ever called Sarill, you can blame that squarely on me.

Overall, my writing is usually focused on action and plot, and my first drafts usually have little else. My second pass at a scene is just to fix all the obvious errors… hopefully before JLY finds them, so I can salvage some portion of my dignity.

The third pass is where I actually make the deeper changes. Usually, I only change a handful of sentences, and leave the rest alone, though there are some troublesome cases where I have to do major rewriting.

Writing Declaration, for instance, was surprisingly difficult. After Rai's warning to Averi, and all that build up, I felt that this scene had more pressure on it than most. The point of this scene is that Averi is usually holding back--and this is what happens when she really uses her position and social skills to benefit herself. So it had to really show that Averi is capable of one-upping Annalise and playing the social game.

Unfortunately, my usual way of showing conflict-- a fist-fight--didn't seem too appropriate for Annalise and Averi. Instead, they play a more delicate game of undermining each other, and in this case, Averi wins, although perhaps the importance of her win isn't as immediately apparent as, say, trying to take Annalise on in a sparring ring. However, having a rebellion questioning her supremacy of the group is probably the worst retribution anyone could inflict on Annalise Emberlynn.

Thanks for reading,

KL