Draft Two! And It's Title Time

by Stephanie Black

Yesterday, I officially finished the second draft of my current work in progress. “Officially” means I have declared it done, even though, yeah, I know there’s THAT issue I need to deal with (THAT issue is for draft three). See, I’ve got a little problem with Stupid Heroine Syndrome. You know the drill—you need the heroine to get herself in a serious pickle so you can have that exciting climactic confrontation with the villain where the heroine nearly gets killed—or maybe she DOES get killed, eh? No spoilers here. Maybe she DOES die, and the ending of the story takes place in the spirit world, where she meets this hunky guy who was BFFs with Captain Moroni . . . anyway, where was I? Stupid heroines. She needs to get herself in danger, but right now, her getting in danger kind of makes her look dumber than a bag of dirt. You want the reader cheering her on, not thinking wow, sister, if you’re that clueless, I’ll root for the villain. So I need to do some tweaking.

Another thing I need to deal with: characterization. Right now the hero is a big, hero-shaped pancake. He’s a really nice pancake, but he could use some depth. The villain also needs work. When he was wisecracking at the climax, I realized, whoa, wait a second. This guy is not a wisecracker. So I changed that, but I still don’t have my head really wrapped around who he is. And I have a bunch of research questions I need answered. Furthermore, I’m afraid the book might be a bit flabby. Draft two clocked in at nearly 106K, and I still have stuff I need to add. Chances are, there’s some fat in there that I could trim—wordiness, repetitiveness, that description of the Paris sewers, the exposition on the whiteness of the whale, etc.

I printed out the book so I can read it through, start to finish. It’s amazing how different it is reading a manuscript straight through than it is working through it slowly. That first read-through is a moment-of-truth experience—how well is the story working? It will be interesting (I hope interesting in a good sense, not interesting in a holy moly what a train wreck sense) I shrank the font and single-spaced to save ink and paper, since it’s a reading copy for my eyes only, but sadly, I forgot to change the font color and thus emptied my black ink cartridge. Phooey.

When I hit draft three, I like to have a working title. Thus, in keeping with tradition, it’s title time! I’d love some title suggestions from our blog readers. The suggestions don’t have to be brilliant. They can even be goofy.

So far, I’m fifty-fifty on titles—twice, Covenant has kept the working titles I submitted with the book and twice they’ve changed them. So if you submit a really groovy title, hey, maybe it’ll end up on the cover. Who knows? Everyone who suggests a title gets entered into a drawing for one of my books. If I decide to use your title suggestion, I’ll send you a book as well. Here's a little blurb about the book:

Fiona Claridge wants nothing more than to stay burrowed in her peaceful, solitary life, teaching at a small New England college and filling her evening hours with work on her fixer-upper house. It’s almost enough to keep at bay the guilt she feels about the death of her roommate in a car accident six years earlier. But when an angry student decides to use reminders of the accident against her and a troubled ex-boyfriend starts edging back into her life, her peace shatters. Someone doesn’t want her free of her painful past—they want her dead.

As of right now, I don’t have a single title idea in my head, so I’m excited to hear your ideas. All suggestions are welcome!