Writing Process: Scrapping a Draft and Starting Over
As God on Supernatural once said, "Writing is hard." It sucks finishing a novel-length draft and realizing it needs a lot of work. Like, a lot. In the words of Aristotle, "A buttload." And then you write and overhaul the story two, three, four... ...or if you're like me, fifteen times with a total of sixteen drafts.
The Beginning
In early 2012, my grandmother underwent heart surgery, and while we stayed with her during her recovery, I'd been working on a story. It was a weird one, a real-life contemporary story that was more a series of loosely connected vignettes than a coherent story. I had been working on that one for a year, and the main character, Addie, was a sassy but vulnerable character who is still close to my heart. While I was writing at night in that little blue house surrounded by dark Ellijay woods, a low-budget movie came on the TV. This particular film wasn't particularly well-made; the writing and unbalanced sound design were especially troubling. However, it featured a scene that was a clear homage to the Texas Chainsaw Massacre dinner scene, but even after that (or was it before?) there was a scene where the cannibalistic backwoods family watched television. Like, you know, a typical family. And it made me think:
What DO cannibalistic serial killers in horror films do in their spare time when they aren't chasing teens...er thirty-year-old actors portraying eighteen-year-olds? What do they do to bond? What are their hobbies? So began Rabbit Red, which was initially intended to be a dark, horror-inspired comedy about a young women adopted by two Hannibal Lecter-esque, ex-surgeons who eat people. However, given some of the subject matter, which deserves more consideration, the story became more serious and introspective.
The First Sixteen Drafts
I just wrote, no outlines or considerations on character arcs. I wouldn't say this was a mistake; at this point with my writing, I never really considered those elements. The issue with Rabbit Red was that it had a fascinating concept, but most of the scenes were loosely connected, non-chronological vignettes. This was a problem with my writing at large. Though I never considered myself a short story writer, I was more accustomed to writing succinct, less-than-1,000 words introspective character pieces, and my novels were essentially those with recurring characters and unceremoniously strung together.
I completely scrapped the first conception of the novel and tried this more dark fantasy vibe of a girl who slowly goes from a strange world rooted in reality to a magical, grotesque place in the woods. So, Pan's Labyrinth in a Southern Gothic setting.
It was a disaster, and I eventually went to the more grounded, character-focused horror, though it was different than what I was used to writing, despite my contemporary writing prior to RR. Even now, I tend to prefer fantastical, supernatural horror over realistic horror. But that second, more grandiose vision didn't work. This is an isolated story where the conflict rests with the three characters who live in a cabin in the woods, not a looming, overarching threat.
Eventually, though, I read a book called, Wired for Story, and I realized the issue was that many scenes didn't further the central conflict, or reveal enough about the characters to justify their existence. The main conflict is this: Rachel, the girl adopted by serial killers, needs to decide whether she is all right with a certain life where she has finally found love and stability after years of abuse, abandonment, and trauma, but her new parents are serial killers, or if she is going to take a moral stand, but at the risk of losing all she has and entering back into the world that has abused and abandoned her.
However, I was so close to the project that I couldn't discern what was wrong (read: everything). So, I shelved it with an intention of returning to it.
And here we are.
The Struggles of Starting Over
Here is my biggest struggle with this seventeenth draft of RR after giving it two years of space: my characters are different people. This goes with the conflict issue. Now that I'm actually ensuring all the scenes tie to the main conflict, Rachel has changed. In the (many) earlier drafts, she kept herself disconnected from her parents' "work" to maintain her innocence. But this makes her disconnected from the whole story. Now, her parents have also changed. Linda and Marcus, and especially Linda, become less concerned about keeping Rachel removed from their work, and why would they when they consider what they do noble?
Also, there's a balance between Rachel's acceptance over her new circumstances and establishing a realistic reluctance to, well, letting serial killers be your new mom and dad, no matter how nice they are. This is further changed because, while all the other RR drafts were in three different POVs, now, I'm only going to be in Rachel's head, spending far more time in her head and somehow relaying info (some in flashbacks!) from other characters' heads within her singular perspective. This also makes the story more of a dark YA novel than an Adult one.
It's scary, admittedly. It's scary adjusting to these old-but-new characters. The world is different by virtue of their shifting roles. I think the fear and uncertainty are what are making me less productive than I should be, but heck, it's actually kind of fun, having this new, more dynamic vision.
What about you? If you write, have you had the experience of stewing over a story you've worked on for years, only to have to start with a blank slate?