Pulling Change Through
I’m at the half-way point in the revision of the 1930s Paranormal Noir and there have been a lot of changes. Things have moved, been added, been deleted, emphasized, softened, and generally wrangled to the point that older parts often have information that’s no longer correct. So, I’m now in the bitey jaws of Continuity, and it can be a right bastard.
Here’s the new version of the section I’m working on right now. (Just to be clear “Phil” is short for Ophelia):
“So, who was this woman?”
“I didn’t get her name before she tried to kill me, and she wasn’t around to ask afterward.”
Phil stared at me. Then she put a cup of coffee down in front of me very slowly and set the pot back on the stove. “Oh, my God… what happened? You didn’t—?”
“Kill her?” I snorted and went with the truth, bracing for Phil’s reaction. “She was already dead. I sent her on. Like the captain.”
Phil shook her head and blinked. “Wait, wait. She was a ghost? You— She—”
“C’mon Phil… I think you know about me and ghosts. That day Captain Davies showed up wasn’t the first time something spooky’s happened around me at the office, and I’ve stopped buying that you never noticed before. You just didn’t want to say anything, did you?”
“Well what was I supposed to say? ‘Heya, boss, how’re the ghosts today’?”
And here is the previous version:
Phil didn’t see ghosts—not like I did—but she had a kind of feel for their presence that I’d taken full advantage of. We’d never said a word to Pete.
“So, who was this woman?”
“I didn’t get her name before she tried to kill me and she wasn’t around to ask afterward.”
Phil stared at me. Then she put a cup of coffee down in front of me very slowly and set the pot back down on the stove. “Did you—?”
“Kill her?” I snorted. “She was already dead. I sent her on.”
Phil shook her head. “Wait, wait. A ghost? How can a ghost write a letter or… or kill someone?”
“There’s more than one type of ghost, Phil. She was more… self-aware, powerful, motivated by something beyond simple revenge, grief, or hope. That kind can seem as alive as you or me and they’re dangerous as hell. She had me fooled up until she shoved her hand into my chest and tried to rip my heart out.”
The big difference here is that in the old version, Phil knows about her boss’s ability to see and destroy ghosts, and in the new one, Phil isn’t in the loop, but she’s seen evidence of it. The emphasis shifts from talking about a specific incident, to revealing a secret about Phil and what she knows, while also dealing with other implications of that knowledge. It’s a small thing here, but it’s a major change for the book and has to be consistent throughout the book for character and plot integrity, information continuity, as well as character arcs that effect other parts of the plot and series arc (if there is a series.)
Little changes can have huge consequences and they have to managed as rigorously as the big ones. The best writing includes nothing that can be done without, no matter how small it seems. In the end, no detail is actually “small.”