Hello Alpheans!
I’d been trying to write the final scene of Chapter 3 and having some trouble. While discussing the book with Denise, she mentioned a couple of things in the way of criticism that were really helpful. One was that in several scenes I either mention or outright focus on the death of Charles and Eva’s daughter Elizabeth. To me, each mention of it made sense, added to the story, and fit where I put it. But Denise turned out to be right, too. It was a bit of overkill to keep bringing it up in scene after scene. The problem was a storyline structure that naturally and repeatedly hearkened back to the Goodmans’ tragedy. While Denise and I were discussing this, it also occurred to me that while Eva is reacting naturally to the events in each scene, I’m missing an opportunity to show the descent of her mental and emotional stability in a natural progression.
So, I’m rewriting the story from the end of the last scene of Chapter 2 onward. I’m re-using as much of the material as possible, but with some careful rearranging of things and adding some new material I’m hoping that I can address the problem Denise highlighted and create a sequence of events for Eva to naturally react to which will show a steady deterioration of her grasp of reality.
With some excellent criticism, the story is going to have a chance to become stronger and better! Thank you, Denise!
TristanBerry.com 