5000 words out

This is my first effort with fiction. Journalism I know: Fiction was a complete mystery.

Until I got about half-way through the first draft.

Then, the flow began, and my completely uncritical spouse began to say, that sounds great! (always good to have a completely uncritical listener, at first) Even considering the source of this input, my gut says the story became, by the end, way better than the words I put on the screen early in the process.

In my own life, I work to keep everything smooth and drama free. And that's pretty much how I wrote that first third of the story. Now in the second draft, even I am scanning over vast tracts of boring verbiage. Ergo, 5000 words are exited from the manuscript, all from the first third of the story.

Now, I must figure out how to make the first third of the story as interesting as the last third.

Drama. More drama. And not just any drama. The kind that builds into the fascinating stuff near the end.

Perhaps introduce certain concepts/people earlier in the story -- or if I must, smooth in new ideas -- to produce the surprises at the end.

And those fascinating details I thought would be really cool to include but just didn't make sense later? Tickle them out so no one is the wiser.

Like weaving a tapestry, and go back to add new colors at the beginning to predict those that appear by the end. Also, extricate useless colors all along the way, one stitch at a time.