Edited by Patricia Stammers, Monday, 12 May 2014, 22:38
No amount of tweaking a dull story is going to make it more exciting I decided and set about dismantling the structure. The end is now the beginning and the beginning the middle. The narration was 1st person, present but now the protagonist tells the back story using the past tense and the present is reserved for what is actually happening. In this way greater tension is created.
Summary of original plot;
Woman invited to dance incurs vicious wrath of rival and rushes from the ballroom into the arms of the man she had been waiting for all evening. They had met online exchanging emails, no photos. He dressed in working gear having just delivered a calf, introduces himself but she does not reveal her identity. She goes home alone trusting that he'll continue corresponding and ask her for another date.
2nd Draft
They meet outside the Corn Hall and he erupts when she tells him her name. As they get to know each other during the course of the evening she tells the back story and they finish up dancing cheek to cheek.
The second version comparing then and now allows the most important relationship to develop in relief as it were against the raffish back story and there is a satisfying climax.
Experiment
No amount of tweaking a dull story is going to make it more exciting I decided and set about dismantling the structure. The end is now the beginning and the beginning the middle. The narration was 1st person, present but now the protagonist tells the back story using the past tense and the present is reserved for what is actually happening. In this way greater tension is created.
Summary of original plot;
Woman invited to dance incurs vicious wrath of rival and rushes from the ballroom into the arms of the man she had been waiting for all evening. They had met online exchanging emails, no photos. He dressed in working gear having just delivered a calf, introduces himself but she does not reveal her identity. She goes home alone trusting that he'll continue corresponding and ask her for another date.
2nd Draft
They meet outside the Corn Hall and he erupts when she tells him her name. As they get to know each other during the course of the evening she tells the back story and they finish up dancing cheek to cheek.
The second version comparing then and now allows the most important relationship to develop in relief as it were against the raffish back story and there is a satisfying climax.