OK, so I’m going to be flipping back and forth between fiction and non-fiction and for now, at least, I’m going to try to rewrite Heir to Ruin but keeping things simpler and more upbeat. I’m only going to focus on my hero and her quest this time around, and I’m not going to go into so much detail about backstories. Only the basics that I need to know.
The trick here is to keep this from getting too emotional, in character’s heads, and literary. And yes, that’s a dirty word. I want to emphasize the external action and conflict. (Really, that’s going to be a physical reflection of her internal journey, if I do this right.)
Today, I just worked on my hero’s character profile, but I’m going to keep it to her and my antagonist . . . the primary antagonist, in this case, for full profiles. Everyone else is going to be a supporting character for this book. I’m not going to try to develop seven different story lines. And I am going to try to keep it single POV. That might force some acrobatics later on, but that’s better than what happened last time around.
This is a first book and I need to keep it within the realm of what I can handle.