Wednesday’s WIPs: WIPping Up Interest in a Minor Character

EASY AS A, B, C . . . from BB 

 ’Alo!  C’est moi, the Bensch Wensch!  Not CC.  As I was telling you a month or two ago, sometimes we have to fill in for one another.  Family emergencies, and all that.

So I’m two weeks early, and would love to have had more time and, therefore, more to report.  That given, what I do have to report is good.  When last you heard from me, I was scrambling to get 20 pages of my WIP sent in to WIFYR (by now, dear regular readers, you know that means Writers and Illustrators for Young Readers).  The good news is: I made my deadline that night and sent the pages.

The count several days of non-stop work, work, work!  Supposed to do 5 to 7 rewritten pages every day through that week’s workshops (where we were in wonderful classes and sessions from 8:30am until after 5:30, with homework to do before the next a.m.).

And, more good news: I got most of that done and turned in.

I also wrote a little blog after it was over that I had tried an experimental assignment on the last day of class: write one scene in a different POV; i.e., 1^st person instead of omniscient, or 3^rd person instead of 1^st, or from a different character altogether.  I tried the latter, at 5:00 a.m. the last day.

And that encompasses my next good news: though I was afraid it maybe didn’t even make sense, when I read it in class, they loved it.  Including my stellar teacher, Cheri Pray Earl.

This minor but interesting and quirky character made a raft of changes to my story, and it’s all good: she became one with the Story Teller I’d introduced at the beginning of Chapter One.  She became a close relative of the Hero.  She took on magical qualities I had heretofore refused to acknowledge she had.  She will be the Hero’s key to finding his magical way to the Princess.  And she will aid the Princess in finding the Hero again when he is lost to her.

Pretty good for a “minor” character, don’t you think?

Oh.  And the title has changed from the mundane, boring (and possibly derivative) Over Hill, Over Dale, and Back Again to Glass Mountain Princess.

Now, all I have to do is write all that into the narrative—oy vey!

See you day-after-tomorrow for Friday’s Friends!