Meredith Mansfield, Author

It sounds like an oxymoron: revision fun. But there are parts of the revision process that can be fun. One of those is when you essentially get to go back into first draft mode to add something or significantly change something.

The first thing I did on this revision of BLOOD WILL TELL was write most of a new first chapter. Along the way, I’ve added or added to a couple of scenes and changed some until they’re almost unrecognizable.

Now I’ve come to a place where I essentially get to add a new chapter again. I killed virtually al of the existing chapter (I think about a paragraph may remain.) and redid it with a totally different idea.  Some of this was necessary because of other changes I was making, some was generated by comments from one of my readers, and some was just the new ideas that comment sparked.

The new chapter will probably need its own little revision. I think it’s too heavy on interior monologue and a bit short on action right now. But I really like the idea.

This is now the first real introduction of my antagonist, at about a third of the way through the story. (He’s been seen before, but without revealing his role.) 

One of the things I had decided on this revision was that I had spent too much time in the antagonist’s point of view. By showing his repeated attempts to kill the protagonists, I ended up making him look a little bumbling and kept him from being a credible threat at the climax. Of course the protagonists have to squirm out of his traps. If he succeeds in killing them the story would end a bit prematurely. But showing him plotting and gnashing his teeth over his failures emphasized them a little too much.

One of my great readers suggested at this particular point that the antagonist could succeed or partly succeed, because at the moment he’s not trying to kill the protagonists, just steal something. That got me thinking, which is one of the greatest things a critique can do for you (thanks, Robin). I came up with a way for him to succeed, but not realize it.

Then I had a wild inspiration out of nowhere to include a character that died very early in the story as a ghost. This is a whole new element in the story and it impacts a later scene in the same location as well.

Best of all, it makes working on this part of the revision a whole lot more fun.