The Axles of my Fiction

Well, my computer is running today. But two axles on my car are falling apart and my voice mail isn't answering except when it feels like it. Most tediously , my writing group this afternoon offered a barrage of criticism on the structure of a story I'm working on. Unquestionably helpful, but tiring. I'd kind-a thought I was close to the last draft of this one.

The problems they noted are the large, persistent kind: characterological. They have to do with my very soul and are the same problems I have to solve again on every novel or piece of fiction or story of any sort that I write. The most important one is over-subtlety.

The first one is the hardest. I always think I've made the point, the action, and the characters so rampagingly clear as to be garish. Yet, the most discerning of my readers frequently miss major points on the first umpteen drafts.

So now I've got to go back to these same pages and get more overt, more underlined, more garishly obvious about what's going on between these people in the story. I thought I was already in-your-face. Apparently I need to go into the reader's inner ear with my message.

Well, this matter is fixable, like the axles on my car. And in the case of the story, I can do it myself instead of taking it to a mechanic. But jeez, when do I get to move on? One day I'd like to write something that came out clear in under ten drafts.