When a Story Refuses to Work

I’ve been working on my science fiction YA story Veritas for a long time. Maybe 5 years. Which isn’t as long as some people have worked on books, but it’s long for me. Finally, about a year ago I felt like I had gotten it to a good place, and sent it to my editor.

She and I both felt it was the best thing I had ever written, and after I fixed a few flaws she’d pointed out, I sent it around to agents.

No one wanted it.

I finally found one agent who loved the writing but was less enamored of the story as told. Gave me some feedback and said she would be happy to look at it if I revised it. I hemmed and hawed for a long while—I wasn’t a fan of some of the changes she wanted, and it took me a while to find a way forward. So I sliced and diced and added and pretty much rewrote the whole thing. It came out very different.

But was it actually any better?

I knew something wasn’t right, but I had worked on Veritas so long and hard that I had lost objectivity. So I sent it back to my editor, hoping the edits needed would become clear and not be too onerous.

The result was not good.

My feeling that something wasn’t right was correct. In fact, most of the story wasn’t correct. And before you think I am just accepting the editor’s notes at face value, I agree with what she’s saying. I’d just been too close to see it—but I knew it somewhere inside. I’d done a lot of work and gone backward. I had been left with a disaster wrapped in a catastrophe.

So now what? I think I finally figured out why I am struggling so much with the story. My protagonist’s goals aren’t clear enough. So I need to think about that. But I also need to think about whether I want to invest more time and emotion into this story.

If I do go forward (and I likely will, because I am nothing if not stubborn), I may go back to my original manuscript and start over from there with the new perspectives of the agent and this misfired rewrite. Just because version one was the best thing I had written to date doesn’t mean it couldn’t be improved. I’m not vain enough to think anything I write is perfect.

I will likely put Veritas aside for a bit, though. Let my subconscious chew on everything. I have a first draft of a manuscript I want to work on, so will probably jump to that and get that moving.

Have you ever had a story that was SO CLOSE but you just couldn’t get right? How did you overcome that?

Comments

  1. I’m going through this with a story I’m working on now. So I can relate. I’m in the process now of working with an editor and hope to figure it out. Meantime, I think I’ll buy a balloon.
    Barbara of the Balloons

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