Paksworld

When I looked at the one editorial request that I just could not make work, and then finally figured it out, I realized it was a perfect example for study.   My editor correctly noted that the emotional high point of a relationship’s end was not at the end…there was an anticlimax scene.

A & B talk, knowing they must part.  A confides to B something never before confided, that moves B greatly, and then leaves for a brief time, and returns very briefly,  before the final separation.    The emotional high point was originally in that first conversation, and weakened by the mundane tone of the actual final parting.

My editor’s suggestion was to move the final separation forward,  so there was only one “leaving.”   This didn’t work because of a necessary time gap and the reader’s need to know that A had done something important (with implications soon to come) in that short separation before the final one.  The only way to show that, without yet another POV change (and too many POV changes too fast are unsettling) was to have A return to B and reveal enough of what happened in the gap to make later actions believable.

Finally, today, I figured it out–I need to move the bulk of the first conversation (with its outcome of deep mutual respect and understanding)  over that time-gap.  The first conversation can now be brief and mundane; the second one will be much stronger,  and the original content will enhance the information about what A has done during the short separation.  But I was fixated on trying to move conversation up, because my editor used page numbers (not her fault–my way of thinking).    Moving the conversation from p.230 to before p.218 did not work, but moving the conversation at 218 down to near 230, and part of the second conversation up to 218  works beautifully.

Whew!

The reader gets the same information from the same people,  but in a way that enhances the story, and for those who are sensitive to the emotional plotline, puts the high point in the right place.  The other way had the accent on the wrong sylLABle, as one of my choir directors in the past used to say.