Yesterday’s Reading…

So, handing someone words on a page much less terrifying than reading aloud to people.  Even though I’ve been in theatre my whole life, I find reading my own words to be a rather heart-racing sort of experience.  Once I got up there and started reading though I dropped into the story and forgot everyone else so that was a good.

There were a lot of goods actually.  The thing about reading aloud is that you hear the rhythm of the words.  I read one Jade section and one Rhea section.  I had been told by some published sci-fi/fantasy writers that I needed to make the trilogy into a series of books with the flashbacks having their own books.  And as its always good that people want more the series is starting younger.  I’ve been having a hard time writing them younger because of the rhythm.  What I found is that they have a similar sentence structure and because I can’t put in the accent Rhea has (too distracting for people) it doesn’t read as different enough.

The other thing I’ve learned, my search word is “suddenly”.  In 200 pages of writing on the computer at the moment I’ve used it 20 times.  Now, that doesn’t seem like it would be a lot, but it is.  Between that and the fact that each character uses it, it’s one of those things that needs to be fixed.  So, I’ve given “suddenly” to Jade. 

I also learned that people who don’t even like or read fantasy wanted to know and read more.  So woot!  People who like and read fantasy also wanted to know and read more, but that was a little more expected.

All of this has resulted in a narrator chart with sections for character names, god/goddess affiliations, pet words, actions, phobias and hates, and talents and loves.  It’s color coded.  I think it’s going to help with the rewrites that are resulting from the reading.