HTRYN Week 6 Finished

Alright, finally, I am done with this part!  It actually took me 2 weeks, and I worked almost all day yesterday,  but I now have detailed info on all the characters that appear in the book.  Even those little characters that just open a door for one of the main character. And, like, random people that the characters notice passing by in the street.  Well, OK, no, not that detailed. (I luckily don't have any such characters because otherwise I would have to make not of them).  Yup, I was going kind of crazy doing this part of the How to Revise Your Novel course.  But it's done now and I sure as **** hope that it comes in handy down the line, once the real part of the revision starts. (Note:  the first few weeks are just diagnosing the different elements of the manuscript/first draft and seeing it for what it is.)

Week 6, or Lesson 6 of the How to Revise Your Novel course is all about answering the following questions:

• Who is each character?
  
• Why is he/she in the book?
  
• Is he/she Main, Secondary, Stand-in, or Redundant?
  
• Should you keep them, make them work harder...or delete them? 
• How does he/she matter?
  
• How can you get readers to relate to them... the way you WANT them to?

And believe me, it is hard work! It also gets quite tedious after awhile.  But I also desperately needed this lesson.  My characters, especially my main character, are just all over the place, as in cold and unfeeling one minute, and seething with teenage giddiness the next (and I'm not writing YA, nor is my story set in a high school).  And many such similar problems.  So I desperately needed this lesson, but I think I might have over done it, or done it not quite the way I was supposed to.  But, be that as it may, I do now have a much clearer understanding as to the progression of each of the main characters in my novel.  And many ideas on how to make it work better in the story.

And now I am off to start Week 7. I'm still going through the instructions, but it already looks like a lot of work.  I am really looking forward to it, though!