As a little teaser to get everyone excited, I figured you might enjoy reading the opening lines as written on page one of the first draft, so here they are: I barely saw here hiding there, behind the lonesome vending machine. If not for a familiar screech I’d heard a thousand times before, a pitch so high only Rowan herself could reach, she would have slipped away, completely unnoticed. Amy’s been getting better at this. Her one-sided game of hide-and-seek. Everywhere she goes, following not too far from my last footsteps. It’s been so long that anything else would be strange. At this point in the game, I found myself roughly 70 pages into the first draft before realizing I preferred Dylan as the Point of View (POV) Character. Unfortunately, this involves rewriting the story from the beginning, and replacing scenes where Amy, the original POV character, was thinking to herself or spending time apart from Dylan.
I am just at the beginning of chapter two for my new first draft, however, I am taking a break to really flesh out the characters and give them a life of their own. This is such an important part of a good story, because each character really does need to be their own person and not just a reflection of what the author would do in this situation. There is a quote by Truman Capote that says, "You can't blame a writer for what the characters say." Not only do I find that quote beautiful, but also a true measure of a properly formed character. If a writer can't find themselves shaking their fist at a character while screaming "you idiot!" then they may need to go back and work on them a little bit more.
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