As I’ve mentioned before, Let No Man Put Asunder is a rewrite of my second novel. I rewrote it in the 1990s and improved it with no better result getting publisher or agent attention. I tried a third rewrite which never got a finished draft, and now this version, which is much stronger. Maybe not stronger yet than version two — that one was really good — but I think it will be by the time I finish.
Last week I discussed one of the changes from the previous versions: a much larger cast. Going over the manuscript this week and thinking about Paul and Mandy’s character arcs, I saw another problem. To wit, that I’ve given them similar character arcs to their earlier incarnations, Neil and Adrienne, and they’re not the same people.
Neil and Adrienne were in a good place when their adventures began. Adrienne, an archeology/history buff, daydreams of uncovering lost cities; Neil fantasizes about being a hardboiled PI. That’s as far as their discomfort goes. I wanted to make them ordinary people, happy in their lives, when they’re dragged into a crazy world of adventure against their will.
Paul and Mandy aren’t in a good place. Paul’s dispute with his parents over his academic future has ended with them cutting off support; he’s now busing tables at a greasy spoon to support himself. Mandy, after years caring for her invalid father and raising her five siblings (Mom decided Dad’s terminal illness was too much to deal with so she split). Now her dad is dead, her brothers and sisters are out of the house, she’s ready to start living her own life … and yet she has no idea what to do next (there are reasons).
I have a rough idea of their emotional state when the book starts but going over it made me see I need a much stronger grasp. Paul in particular. Mandy could keep going the way she is for a while; Paul’s feeling a lot more stress. Does he want to resume his academic life? Make a clean break? Reconcile with his parents? Build a life without them?
As I’ve blogged about several times, Orson Scott Card breaks down four types of stories. They can center on the milieu, a question, the character arc or the plot. Maria in Southern Discomfort starts in crisis and ends with the crisis resolved. Her experiences in Pharisee Ga. stem partly out of her own decisions. Paul and Mandy, on the other hand, didn’t do anything. Other hands pulled strings and brought on the crisis in which they find themselves, hunted by mercenaries through the streets of Bluestone, Pa. It’s more plot-driven than character driven
Nevertheless, the first chapter is heavily focused on their personal problems and their discomfort with their lives. The ending chapter, at least in the second draft deals with them wrapping up their personal conflicts or at any rate making a start on fixing them. Their character arc is just as important as the plot arc. I have to know where they are at the start and how the adventure changes them. Unlike Neil, Paul doesn’t fantasize about being Sam Spade or Mike Hammer and he’s not getting a thrill off being plunged into danger. And the revelations about how he got involved in this will be way more unsettling than what Neil discovered.
Neil’s arc also involved him meeting his dream woman — not necessarily eternal love, but way more than the casual affairs he’s experienced. As I wrote in the previous post, Cordelia/Paul doesn’t seem to work the same way, so maybe not. For Mandy, I have a clearer idea of her ending arc and ideally sex is part of it — but again, the guy she sleeps with doesn’t seem to fit the book at all. Different lover? Change the arc? I’m not sure.
While there’s clearly a lot of work ahead, all of this is fixable. Hopefully without taking as long as I usually do.
Cover image by Sam Collins, all rights are mine.
