Sirena’s insides burned and her head spun like the world was rotating Topsy-Turvy. This is what is happening to Sirena in the scene 2 chapter 12 of my work in progress werewolf novel During the Blue Hour.
I finished the scene ‘Topsy-Turvey’ last night totaling 882 words and the scene itself coming together with 1185 words . I didn’t really set a goal for this scene. However this scene was in the first draft and I had to totally rewrite it over because it was a lot of characters who was in this scene in the first draft but are not in this draft. I replaced them with other characters .
In this scene it is a sort of continuation from chapter 11. The reaction coming from my main character Sirena’s POV. And she must search for Eli in all the Flames of Chaos that is going on in the scene.
A lot happens . In the opening of the scene she is coughing from all the smoke and she jumps off the stage rushing through a crowd of screaming people and she is trying to figure out what is going on. She is confused and disoriented. She hears things that are not supposed to be heard through all the noise like the croak of a crow . Which is the earth diver and I explained what a earth diver is in my earlier post EARTH DIVER &CREATION MYTHS IN MY WIP NOVEL. And she sees violence she never seen before amongst the towns people.
Through all this confusion . She tries to figure out what happened to herself . Because she doesn’t remember dancing or even being on stage . Another thing is she not only tries to evade her mother who is looking for her. But also the town delegator, Mary Fleming that gave her the dance scholarship .
She runs into her dance instructor who also can’t remember even starting the recital and tells her to go home immediately .
But Sirena has to find Eli . However, she bumps into her sister Mercedes who she knows gave her up to her mother. Her sister is about to signal their mother but Eli appears and saves Sirena my blackmailing Mercedes and the two rush off.
I tried to make this scene kind of intense and Shaky by having Sirena navigate through the maze of the crowds that stands in her way between her and her jeep. Each moment that she thinks she is going to get to her jeep she gets sidetracked or interrupted. And I try to make it where there is like this claustrophobic anxiety of will she get caught or wont she get caught . Especially the moment she runs into Mercedes . I try to make that moment a narrow kind of deer caught in headlights kind of feeling.
I feel like in this draft I accomplished a much better scene that clicks together with the other scenes in the chapter because of the deletion of unnecessary characters and the addition to ones that make better sense especially for the next couple of chapters. That was the problem I think I had in my first draft with this scene.
For instance there was the stepfather from the first draft. Well I said in earlier posts Why Writers Remove Some Characters but Keep Others? I deleted his character all together in this draft. So obviously his presence in this scene would not make sense. So what I did was I added Sirena’s mother Renee in this scene who wasn’t in this scene at all in the previous draft . She didn’t show up to the recital at all in the last draft. Its makes perfect sense in this draft. Because of the previous scenes of the confrontations with her mother. I really believe it fits better.
I also added Eli. His character wasn’t in this scene in the first draft . But it makes a lot of sense to add him in this scene because he does dance with Sirena and I also kind of make him a secondary character in this draft where as in the first draft he was only in a couple of scenes. But his presence is important because I will be working on writing a novel about him .
Another character that was deleted out of this scene was Zios . I wrote about him in other post My Deleted Character, Zios Short story coming soon…. Zios is the father of Nadiya , Sirena’s dance instructor. He was an important character in the first novel and he is also a main character in a prequal that I wrote and additional short stories about him that I’m writing. Like I said in other post I didn’t feel the need to put him in the novel anymore because his character is really not needed but I do mention him and will continue to mention him. Instead he is fully replaced with his daughter Nadiya who played an important role in the first draft and who will play an important role in this draft.
I hope eventually within the finished product of the novel the significant changes and elevations to this scene that I made will be apparent. I do know that this scene is the quiet before the storm kind of scene. And that I’m building up to something big happening .
The next scene will still be chapter 12 in Xavier’s POV.
If you liked this blog post and you want to see more content involving my work in progress During the Blue Hour Follow , Like , share . But first LET’S START A DIALOGUE
HAVE YOU REPLACED ANY OF YOUR CHARACTERS WITH OTHERS IN A SCENE ?
I want to know so let me know in the comments below.
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