When the publisher turned me down, they recommended I get myself an editor. I'd considered it before, but now, it's become essential. I just got an email back from said editor, inviting me to turn in my stuff [if possible] around the first part of August.
I've been incorporating the last significant feedback I received from a fellow writer. I've chosen the middle ground. I've been trying to figure out how it works within the typical format of the romance novel. A lot of romance novels start when guy and girl catch each other's eye and ends when they close the deal somehow and become an item. I don't start there. That's what the feedback [and the publisher for that matter] seems to want. They want my romance novel to be JUST a typical, run-of-the-mill romance novel that starts at eye contact and ends with happily ever after. But that's not what the story is about for me. It misses the point. As I've said before, for me, it's the tale of two broken people who have to seek healing for themselves before they are ready to create a relationship with each other.
So now, I've cut out everything from the first 85 pages that isn't critical. I introduce the character and make her loveable [I hope] by making the reader laugh and see her love for others around her. They see her heart and her humor. Now the reader cares about her, they may care about her false start at romance [the once upon a time that sounds like so many romance novels and fairy tales but ends badly] then her dramatic scene of pain and heart-ache. All of that now happens in 15 pages, a prologue and a brief part one, which sets up [without flashbacks or dream sequences] the heroine's back story. I can see where I need to reshape her character some, but overall, she's more or less ready for editing software and another read through with my husband.
The problem is his part of the narrative. That same reader recommended I cut his side, where I write from both his and her points of view to add to the mystery. From what I understand, there's no mystery in a romance novel. Pretending there's mystery in a romance novel is like pretending there's some kind of mystery as to what's going to happen to the Titanic at the beginning of the movie. I don't like cutting his side entirely since so much of the story revolves around him, and not just the romance. A big part of the climax is about working out his trials. If this is her story, his trials don't mean much. It becomes a different story entirely. In addition, I've just written the second book's first draft from, once again, the male and female perspective. If I cut the guy out of this story, I have to do the same with that story. And I'm not willing to do that. Once again, it changes the narrative.
So does this mean I have to change it to third person? I like the urgency of first person. I don't know. I'm inclined to find a new way, a brief way, to introduce him and to keep his voice as a back-up singer, less important than hers but still present. That's the next part for me to struggle with. Wish me luck.
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