Hi there. Nice to be back. And to all you new readers out there – welcome! Feel free to take a look around.

When last we spoke, I was about to embark on a major rewrite of two outlines.

One of them is just about finished, while the other is somewhere in the early parts of Act 2.

Neither has been easy.

The toughest obstacle to overcome has been hanging on so tightly to that which has come before. Significant changes have to be made, or there’s no point to the rewrite.

This isn’t to say I’m totally disregarding what I’ve already written. For example, in a previous draft, a character is killed in a certain way. In this new one, the same method of killing is used, but for a totally different character in a different scenario, and it now holds a lot more significance in terms of the overall story.

While you can’t force yourself to come up with new ideas, you can challenge your creativeness by simply asking “What’s already here is good, but what’s another way this could happen?” There are always options and choices. Don’t limit yourself. Have fun with it.

Another benefit to these rewrites is since I have a fairly strong grasp of how the stories are supposed to play out, I can now concentrate on building up character development (something pointed out and recommended by several note-givers), which also allows for some beneficial quiet and revealing moments between rousing action sequences.

As much as I enjoyed coming up with a lot of those sequences, several have been cut in order to focus more on the characters. I’ll miss them, but they had to go (and could be possibly be resurrected for future use, as mentioned above).

Results so far have been encouraging, but I won’t really know until actual pages get written.

Corny as it may sound, letting yourself develop new ideas and approaches really is quite liberating. And the more you do it, the easier it gets.