I had an excellent experience revising and editing yesterday, I added even more new scenes and a new flashback (could be a novella when its done). I'm wondering if I have too many flashbacks, I feel like they are important to the story but I'm wondering if I could cut a couple that don't seem to have anything to say. I'll wait until the group sees it to decide, that seems to be a strategy that's working. I'm hoping I can get a few minutes today to revise and copy edit this manuscript but I'm actually chomping at the bit to work more on my urban fantasy novel (working title is Lost Lamb).
The main character is Jaden, a mercenary who deals with the supernatural on a regular basis and hunts monsters professionally. I feel like there is a lot of magic and spells that get thrown around in urban fantasy as a matter of course, often our heroes in this genre have some hereditary gift or mystical training that grants them powers. This is all well and good but it occurred to me recently how tremendously hard it would be to live in a world with monsters and demons as an ordinary human with no special powers or advantages. When the thought came to me I recalled a mantra from some article or book I'd read about writing fiction that gave a simple formula for compelling writing.
"Believable characters in believable settings with unbelievable difficulty."
What could more difficult than living in a hostile world with no help or protection? I think that qualifies as unbelievable difficulty. For that reason I decided to make Jaden a plain ol' vanilla mortal just like ma and pa used to make. That decision gave me a compass for his personality too, he has to be willing to do underhanded and unfair things to get an advantage. He uses every tool available to him and is often dishonorable or downright vindictive to the creatures of the night. I'm interested in that.
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