Speed writing and second drafts

We meet again!

The NaNoWriMo process emphasizes speed - daily word count targets, the 50k goal - which is a mixed blessing, I think. Having a deadline is a good idea, since it's a wonderful goad (I probably wouldn't have finished VVH without it), but it results in a lot of telling instead of showing. In my case, at least. YMMV, as always.

Going back over VVH to work on the second draft, I'm realizing how sketchy, breathless really, much of the material is. As an example, in the first draft, Lucy's announcement to her family of her decision to return to Italy, scene of her vampire assault, and her actual departure from the US, is covered in about 3 paragraphs. I tell the readers it happens, and go into as much detail about her flight from NYC to Rome than I do about how her parents react to what she tells them. 

Here's how it reads now. Substitute Italy, Rome and Texan for Britain, London and English, and you have the first draft version:

A month passed. 

Lucy had been released from the hospital and left Britain under an already-fading media eye. And then a couple weeks back home, and calls to London on the sly. 

(Twice she'd talked to the English guy, and somehow hadn't managed to find out his name.)

And the announcement "I'm going back" much to her parents' shock and dismay. There were long, loud arguments in the Manning family house. In the end, baffled and worried, Mom and Dad had come to accept it, probably only because Lucy swore, on her immortal soul, she wouldn't do anything stupid, and she'd be as careful as humanly possible, and she'd call them every day.

Not a lot of meat on those bones, is there? Lucy's already made her decision and accepted her new calling in the previous chapter, but deciding and doing are two different things. I need to show more - a lot more - of what happens in the month that passes. Practically every sentence up there could become a scene in its own right.

* Lucy leaving the hospital and going home.

* One or two of the phone calls to London

* The big one - Lucy telling her family she's going back to Britain.

I don't want to go too far the other way - this is a supernatural action story, not a Lifetime Presents movie - but these are important events, and they'll help make Lucy a fuller character, and give her family, who barely appear in the first draft, more of a presence.

And now, because pictures are fun, here's one of Mary Elizabeth Winstead, the actress who served as my mental model of Lucy as I was writing.

Signing off...