Rejects

Hey, remember way back when I used to talk about writing all the time?

Well, more than I talked about snot, anyway. (yes, I’m still congested. Did you want to hear about it? Or, instead, I could share a bit about the re-writing I’ve been doing.)

The first draft of Taro started with meeting Rafe, disrupting Taro’s world on page one. But readers said they wanted to see his “normal” world for just a bit first. So I wrote a pretty stagnant first scene. That, of course, goes against all the noveling wisdom I’ve been attempting to absorb, so I decided that it needed changing again.

So here’s a bit of the process, including some of the rejects:

Knife-edge kick aimed straight at my nose–good thing baby legs were so short.

Nope.

Teeth sank into my finger. Lucky for her and me, the kid only had two.

“Ilsa!” Kat snapped. “Don’t bite Uncle Taro!”

The baby ignored her sister to gnaw on my finger. I let her; it was the first time she wasn’t screaming since I got the kid.

Naw. Re-think. People he could interact with:

• Eve–training in some form. Crawling under something. What?
• Ben–could be asking him about training. Could be trying to talk. Could have asked for help with the kids.
• Plink–yeah, I got nothing for this.
• Hanna–umm…she’s trying to get him to go off-ship and get in trouble?
• Ariel–yeah. No.
• Refil–no.
• Mikey–heh, he wants a good poker game. No, want Taro against big guy as a surprise.
• Kat–she’s three. Not very helpful.
• David–same age as his twin, hello!

Okay, what else? Brainstorm. Fire could be good. A building collapse. Air car crash. Something falling on a child? A kid in danger. Some emergency no one saw coming. A train derailment. A bridge issue. Rescuing a child from the back of a horse.

A Kleptan encounters a fire extinguisher? A Klept creature, maybe. Hmm, going nuts? And there’s a kid hiding under something, it’ll get to him, kill it–And Taro grabs the fire extinguisher. Then someone compliments his quick thinking and offers him a job.

“Father’s Light! Get clear!”

A squeal followed the shout. People pressed back. I pushed forward. If something was happening, I wanted to know. That was why Eve caught me at the site of trouble so often. Not because I’d caused it.

Not always.

Another squeal; something up there was pissed off. I’d wandered down this street following signs promising a show. But from the screams, something wasn’t going right.

“Gerard! Get clear, lad!”

Hells. I used my height–short–and my skills–mean–to hurry forward as a man shouted and a woman screamed and something shrieked.

“Drop it, Gerard! Just drop it!”

Effing hells. A small boy hung terrified from a tree, while a six-legged lizard thing tried to scale it, snapping and clawing. A man beat the thing’s backside with a whip. If he did turn the beast, he’d die.

“Shoot it!” I ordered.

“That beast is worth–”

Bastards. I raked the area, looking for anything–found it. I leaned into a taxi and snatched the fire-can. Ran at the beast from the side and sprayed right in its face. Have to affect the brain–

The creature shook the big-toothed head on its long neck. Lethargic and confused

Bah…

A lot of the problem, I know, is that having him interact with others reveals things I “reveal” in that original first scene with Rafe. So the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I needed to change that scene. And I didn’t wanna. That first meeting is part of the fabric of Eve’s galaxy to me now.

(Note to self: name the place. There’s so much more to that ‘verse than Eve now.)

Fabric or not, I did eventually yank it. *sigh* (okay, “yank” doesn’t equal “delete.” It’s here, should you care to read it.)