I’m not flailing. I’m making progress.
I know, keep telling myself that. But it’s true. Once I rewrote the beginning, the part I had trashed when I began the last rewrite, I couldn’t move forward anymore. Finally I realized it was because I’d rewritten the next part so recently.
So I’m back to One-Pass. I have great faith in it. I’ve written my theme, my tagline, my character arc, and I’m working on the second draft of my blurb.
Holly Lisle’s One-Pass Revision Method starts with these things. As she says, if you don’t know where you’re going, how do you expect to get there?
Here’s the first draft:
(insert: Alexanders are meant for glory, but) Dr Ben Alexander couldn’t save every soldier. It’s debatable if he even saved himself. He couldn’t even save himself. Broke, stranded, and haunted by his wartime experiences, he takes signs on as doctor to the freighter Pendragon’s Dream. Captain Eve Marcori doesn’t care about his references–and she’s a mutant. Ben hopes for peace, quiet, and research–Marcori is a mutant. If he can learn how Marcori’s her body heals so incredibly quickly, perhaps he could save more lives than were lost.
Alexanders are meant for great things. Ben feels the pressure. (moved this up, shaved words. The limit is 250.)
Marcori is a Marine, though, and living her life the same way she fought the war someone is trying to kill her. Peace and quiet are not in the prognosis.
Marcori’s world is a darker place than Ben knew existed, and she navigates it with an ease he finds distasteful, even frightening. But from the shattered corridors of a booby-trapped space station, through the desperate slums of Morgan’s Chance and the shadowy dealings of smugglers in a forbidden port, one thing shines through that Ben cannot deny. Marcori is a rescuer as determined as himself.
He’s rationalized her viciousness as a product of her genes, declaring her not quite human to maintain his distance. If she’s not human, he can take the knowledge But if she’s not human, her enemies have as much right to her genes as she does. If she is human–then Ben is in very deep water.
210 words. Even here, I write short, edit longer. I did mention it’s a first draft, right? The second is only half done, but already a HELLUVA lot better.
Onward!