It started with a "What if …?" What if you ordered a mail-order bride, sent COD?
For those too young to remember a time when there was no Amazon - when if you wanted to buy something without getting out of your pajamas, you dialed a number on your TV screen - COD stands for Cash on Delivery. It means you pay for the goods when they arrive at your door, instead of before they are shipped. If you don't pay, they send the item back.
So what would happen if someone refused to pay for their mail-order bride after she'd already been flown over from her home country? That's the idea I had for a story. At the time I was writing short stories for my own entertainment, never intending to publish anything, even for free online, but the event naturally prompted me to think, "Why did she sign up to be a mail-order bride in the first place?" I came up with a backstory and wrote that. I started to fall in love with the character and had to find out what happened to her after she was rejected and abandoned in a foreign land.
It turned into a novel. I read it to my then-girlfriend, now-wife. She cried. I more or less forgot about it for many years. I was writing other things and doing other things with my life. Eventually I decided to rewrite it completely from scratch. I rearranged and substituted some of the early scenes to make them serve the plot more. I gave the characters some life goals outside of the immediate crisis. I wrote two new endings to pay off these life goals instead of just being a generic happily-ever-after.
I felt it was done. I started researching how to submit it for publication. Then finally my wife got around to re-reading it. Her criticism was flatly negative. I don't think it really got worse since the first draft, I just think all my talk about publishing had raised the bar. I was hurt but not discouraged. I still believed it was a good story. It just needed work.
So now I'm into my third rewrite. My wife made me see that the major flaw was that it wasn't detailed enough. Most of the time, I knew what was going to happen in the story and was rushing to get it typed in before it slipped my mind. I didn't spend enough time on why it happened or detailed description. I think the plot of the beginning and end are good, but I'm filling out the middle. It needs to do a better job of justifying how we get to the climax. I'm also moving some stuff from the end in there, to keep the pacing of the denouement quick. These changes will hopefully add some desired length: the second draft was only novella-length anyway.
This time, I'm utilizing more outside help. I think I've poured just about all the raw inspiration into it that it needs. I'm reading books on craft, other books in the genre, even books that my character would have read and been influenced by. I'm looking for feedback from other writers. So that's why I'm here. I'm not sure what kind of help specifically I'm looking for, but I thought I'd just dive in and find out what's available.
Right now I'm in the process of re-plotting the middle. I've got a bunch of index cards with ideas for scenes on them, and I need to pick which ones to use and arrange them chronologically. At some point I'll have a draft substantially filled in, and I'll be looking for someone (other than my wife) to critique it.
For those too young to remember a time when there was no Amazon - when if you wanted to buy something without getting out of your pajamas, you dialed a number on your TV screen - COD stands for Cash on Delivery. It means you pay for the goods when they arrive at your door, instead of before they are shipped. If you don't pay, they send the item back.
So what would happen if someone refused to pay for their mail-order bride after she'd already been flown over from her home country? That's the idea I had for a story. At the time I was writing short stories for my own entertainment, never intending to publish anything, even for free online, but the event naturally prompted me to think, "Why did she sign up to be a mail-order bride in the first place?" I came up with a backstory and wrote that. I started to fall in love with the character and had to find out what happened to her after she was rejected and abandoned in a foreign land.
It turned into a novel. I read it to my then-girlfriend, now-wife. She cried. I more or less forgot about it for many years. I was writing other things and doing other things with my life. Eventually I decided to rewrite it completely from scratch. I rearranged and substituted some of the early scenes to make them serve the plot more. I gave the characters some life goals outside of the immediate crisis. I wrote two new endings to pay off these life goals instead of just being a generic happily-ever-after.
I felt it was done. I started researching how to submit it for publication. Then finally my wife got around to re-reading it. Her criticism was flatly negative. I don't think it really got worse since the first draft, I just think all my talk about publishing had raised the bar. I was hurt but not discouraged. I still believed it was a good story. It just needed work.
So now I'm into my third rewrite. My wife made me see that the major flaw was that it wasn't detailed enough. Most of the time, I knew what was going to happen in the story and was rushing to get it typed in before it slipped my mind. I didn't spend enough time on why it happened or detailed description. I think the plot of the beginning and end are good, but I'm filling out the middle. It needs to do a better job of justifying how we get to the climax. I'm also moving some stuff from the end in there, to keep the pacing of the denouement quick. These changes will hopefully add some desired length: the second draft was only novella-length anyway.
This time, I'm utilizing more outside help. I think I've poured just about all the raw inspiration into it that it needs. I'm reading books on craft, other books in the genre, even books that my character would have read and been influenced by. I'm looking for feedback from other writers. So that's why I'm here. I'm not sure what kind of help specifically I'm looking for, but I thought I'd just dive in and find out what's available.
Right now I'm in the process of re-plotting the middle. I've got a bunch of index cards with ideas for scenes on them, and I need to pick which ones to use and arrange them chronologically. At some point I'll have a draft substantially filled in, and I'll be looking for someone (other than my wife) to critique it.
