Easy or Hard?
Why is it that some manuscripts hop along at a fast pace, stopping to smell the daisies at times, and other manuscripts fall into the pond and sink to the bottom?
Is it a better understanding of the characters, the plot, all of the above? Could it be the voice and/or genre?
My current ms is a YA mystery. It’s my first YA, so it could go to reason that it would be difficult. But my heroine, a snarky teenager, is a breeze. Her words come almost effortlessly and her GMC is pretty easy. Her voice doesn’t seem far away from the snarky heroine I wrote in my last adult mystery, yet this one is practically writing itself. (Perhaps it has something to do with my own level of sarcasm and still present teenage angst. 
)
I also started writing (or tried to) my next project, which is an adult mystery. I’m purposely attempting for this heroine to not speak with snark, for the most part, and it’s definitely not writing itself. In fact, I’m currently working on my third opening. It’s not fun, cute or funny, like I hoped. Am I just not connecting with my heroine? Maybe I don’t fully understand her, or maybe she’s not fun to me.
So what about you? Do you have books that naturally flow (give or take amodicum of hair pulling)?
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Last year at SoCNoc, I started a novel where I thought it would be hard to write.
I didn’t like the hero, because he’s the bad guy in several other stories. I thought it would be difficult to write, because I didn’t really emphasize with him.
You could have knocked me down with a feather, when I looked up 60k words later and there he was, full of life, and not at all how I expected him to be.
I always have trouble with heroines. They start off all well and good, and then turn into doormats. They are hard for me to write, but Mason? Mason flew from my fingers onto the page, alive and most definitely kicking. She wasn’t a doormat.
Again, a huge surprise for me. I loved writing that book, it was truly fun to discover what happens with those two.
But the one prior to their story?
Ugh.
It’s hard. Soo…sooo hard.
I might start that one over, for SoCNoC this year and hope I have another “Wow, this is writing itself” time.
But I doubt it.
I think the key is to get to know your characters.
I knew my hero, even though I didn’t like him. I’d known him for several books.
It made things a lot easier, and allowed me to make him more threedimensional. Silke(Quote) (Reply)
I agree about getting to know them, Silke. I thought I knew my heroine, but I guess not. I actually knew some of my secondary characters better. I also think I tried to fit her into a mold and it doesn’t fit. Lessons learned!
Jenn(Quote) (Reply)