Valuable Mistakes

It occurred to me as I was reading a book on writing this weekend that the mistakes were far more valuable to me than explanations of why things worked without any mistakes shown. So I wondered if it would be useful for me to talk about some mistakes I’ve made on the way to producing finished novels.

1. Mira, Mirror was originally about a mirror who learned from the evil witch in the Snow White fairy tale how to be a terrible human. Why this was a mistake? No one wants to read a story about a character who has nothing human to make her sympathetic. I think this applies to a lot of sff writing.

2. The Monster In Me originally began on about the last page of the published book. Why was this a mistake? The character had already done all the changing that the book needed to be about. So the book just wasn’t very interesting and the scenes had no narrative power to transform the reader. Which is what a novel is all about.

3. The Princess and the Hound was originally a story about a prince who was trying to figure out the secret about the princess who always had a hound with her. Why was this a mistake? The prince was rather like a pale version of Dr. Watson. He was telling the story, but he had little story of his own, except a desire to get the girl. It was only later that I added in the story of Prince George’s own magic and his struggle to conceal it, and then finding the courage to reveal it.

4. The Princess and the Bear was originally a retelling of Ladyhawke, the movie. Chala and Richon were human at opposite times of day, and never either human or animal together. Why was this a mistake? It was basically impossible to have any meaningful dialog or much interaction between them (this wasn’t a movie, after all, and the visuals were all with words).

5. The Rose Throne originally took place over the course of about 7 years, beginning when the two princesses were only eleven years old. Why was this a mistake? A YA reader generally likes to read about YA. I’m sure you’ve heard that. But in addition, this long span of action really cut down the tension. I ended up lopping off the first six years of the book (about 100 pages) and just making myself write a new intro to the characters and the situation.

Learn from this what you will. I suspect that my mistakes are not particularly original, though I hope that eventually my solutions to them are.