Last week, I completed the second draft of my Oz novel, currently titled "Bad Wizard." It's 40 chapters long, 100,000 words, and, for the most part, I feel pretty good about it. I still need to tweak Dorothy's personality--she's kind of a blank slate in the original book, and for such a central character I feel bad that I don't have a firm grasp of her personal voice. She has a biography, she has politics and philosophies and goals, but what I don't have for her is any distinctive personality tick that would let you pick out her dialogue even if it wasn't attributed. (For an example of what I mean, if you read Greatshadow with all the dialogue tags removed, you could easily tell if the speaker was Stagger or Infidel or Zetetic. They have different attitudes and vocabularies.)
I think my problem is that I don't want her to be sassy and sarcastic, which would be the easy personality to place on her given her current role. But, when I play her as serious and driven, she comes across as flat given the insanity of events around her. Oh well. I'll figure it out.
Except for Dorothy being tough to pin down, the rest of the book crackles. I was worried about writing in a genuine historical setting, but think I manage to blend just enough historical fact in to make the fiction plausible without overloading the reader with boring details.
But, enough talking about it. There's another draft needing my attention. Onward!
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