For quite some time now, I’d been under the impression my Unidentified manuscript was finished. And as far as I understood at the time, it was. I’d written it, revised it several times over, edited it, received critiques, revised again, edited again, received more critiques, and so on. It was polished and ready to go.

Then came the Pikes Peak Writers Conference. Several workshops made me re-think a few aspects of the manuscript, but they were quick fixes. And truthfully, it wasn’t really a matter of “fixing” per se– I didn’t think of anything as broken. It was a matter of making shifts, of evolving the story by multiplying its strengths. I don’t believe perfect manuscripts exist; there’s always room for improvement.

Much like writers.

Then I attended the Donald Maass add-on workshop, The Fire in Fiction. And, well… you see what happened. Clearly, there was more room than I’d thought!

I still feel my manuscript was polished before the workshop. My beta readers loved it (and no, my beta readers aren’t related to me. ;) ), and I was happy with it. But now the manuscript is even better because the story itself has evolved, along with my main character, Elizabeth.

A few of the things I did while my manuscript and I were huddled in our chrysalis:

• Increased emotional conflict. It wasn’t absent before by any means, but I’ve excavated more of the emotional subtleties and put them on the page.
• Ramped up some of the dialogue. If there’s anything I’m hypercritical of in literature, it’s dialogue, so of course I want mine to feel authentic.
• This is a multiple-POV novel, but I demoted one of the characters to non-POV. I realized the scenes I least liked working on were his. I know, I know. What bigger red flag is there? The story was definitely strengthened by this decision.
• I’ve been far crueler to my main character. I’m sorry, Elizabeth! But the added struggles have incited an evolution in her, a transformation that was far greater than what she experienced in the previous incarnation of the manuscript.
• Altered the ending in light of those transformations.

To be honest, some of these changes were ideas I’d had well over a year ago, but I didn’t want to implement them because I thought it might be “too much”. I didn’t want to be that torturous to my main character, to cause that much pain. I thought readers might feel overwhelmed or alienated in the face of so much darkness. I didn’t want them to throw the novel across the room in frustration.

But a few of the things said during the workshop just made it click for me. I’m paraphrasing here, but he advised us to pay attention to internal resistance when we think about turning points that could cause great suffering for our characters. It was then that I seriously considered doing what I was resisting. I thought about it. Slept on it. Talked to a few people about it.

I realized it’s absolutely true. Internal resistance has turned into a compass for me.

As writers, we can’t be afraid to push our characters to their limits. And sometimes, that means causing an existential dilemma by removing what matters most.

Do you push your characters as far as you can? Is there something more you could do to push them? Why haven’t you done it?

I know people tend to be fairly surprised that the extraterrestrials in Unidentified aren’t exactly small, contrary to popular ideas about “little” grey men. Gabi did a great job with character proportions relative to each other in this piece. There’s a lot in the novel taken from classic abduction/ET contact reports, but I chose to turn those tropes on their heads to create something different.

The background in this piece is also quite significant, and I love the way she painted it! Thank you, Gabi, for a beautiful rendition of the characters I’ve spent so much time with.

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