.jpg)
With the novel revisions starring me in the face, the first thing I need to do is decide on the genre, whether my novel will be a romance novel or a women’s fiction. The novel is about a young woman who makes a deadly decision when she goes in search of food for her family during the civil war in Freetown. She is caught by rebel soldiers who are hunting for her husband and stolen diamonds believed to be in his possession. When the night is over, four family members are executed, and her husband gone without a trace. When she receives news that her husband is still alive, she embarks on a journey with an American doctor to rescue her husband. She finds her husband, but when their escape plan fails and her husband is killed, she discovers the stolen diamond and takes on the task of getting the diamond into the right hands in order to prevent a third insurgence on her country.
If I decide to go the romance route, then nothing is more important than the developing relationship between the young woman and the American doctor. That would mean deleting most of the first part of my book and starting the romance novel at a later point in the book. It would also mean speeding up the time frame between events.
With a women’s fiction, everything that happens to my heroine is important, and finding love is just one piece of that. The bigger priority then would be showing my readers how this young woman changes and grows—how she learns to forgive, heal, and move forward. Love between her and the American doctor would be something that buds through the adversities they endure together. In addition, with the women’s fiction angle there is more freedom and flexibility with my plot and I can leave my beginning intact.
My decision is to go the route of a women’s fiction, so that resolved, the next bite of this elephant is redoing my character sketches. Once that is done I’ll re-outline to ensure the novel is going in the direction I want and then go on to plotting those wonderful events and points of no return. All the fun, fun parts we love about taking our readers to a totally new experience.
So, remember, if you have some daunting task(s) facing you, lay it all out, slice it up and pick up the part you want to eat first. Till then, happy elephant eating.
Stay Blessed,
~Arama Christiana
Facebook
Website
GoFundMe
