by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls
One of the things I really have to focus on is character development in the novel I’m developing. I have a really strong concept, but I got to the end of the first act the last go-round and realized there the novel didn’t really follow the structure of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. In that novel, the focus of POV scenes is definitely on two people. There are subplots, but the most screen time is devoted two the two main POV characters.
So, that’s why I’m starting from scratch — in a sense — so I can build the foundation of the two main characters and their relationship. Each time I start all over again, not only does the story drift far, far away from the original conceit, it gets far better as well.
Anyway, tonight, I hope to fix some structural problems the new setup of the novel has developed. The story is definitely getting better, but each time I start all over again, I usually have some pretty big structural problems that I have to fix along the way as well.
It will be interesting to see how far I get tonight. It’s going to require a lot of thinking to figure out what the characters do in such a way that I can squeeze the most character development out of them going forward.
