Testing Conflicts

I recently worked on notes for the Echoes rewrite. The original draft was sci-fi, and I’m switching it to urban fantasy romance, so it’s a HUGE rewrite. Basically, I’m chopping the first draft into bits and scattering those bits into 3 novelettes.

Each novelette has its own story, of course, and its own conflicts. The romantic conflicts were the more difficult to figure out. Before I started plotting out individual scenes, I wrote new book descriptions for each of the novelettes. This turned out to be a really good test for the conflicts.

What seemed strong enough in my head was super weak when spelled out on the page. I think my initial problem was that I tried to keep the relationship dynamic too close to the first version of the story. I ended up completely switching a character’s alliance. This is going to be fun.