Over the last 8 days I have taken
Amelia Rider, the first unedited draft
to
Amelia Rider, the first edited draft.
This means that I finally got to read through my story for the first time and I edited it along the way.
My total word count now stands at 73,535 words.
I added a net total of 3,491 words and 6 extra pages.
My first take on reading through it:
Not bad, if I do say so myself.
Amelia Rider is a modern adaptation of The Mysteries of Udolpho, sans the mysteries. There are many reasons why I stripped the story of the mystery story lines but those reasons are not important here. Suffice to say that I did it and Amelia Rider took on a new life of her own, while running a parallel course to Emily St. Aubert of The Mysteries of Udolpho.
That being said, after I stripped the story of the mysteries I was left with a story that was happier and brighter than it ought to have been. The Mysteries of Udolpho (if you can get past the fainting and hysterics of the women) is inherently a dark and complicated tale and I wanted to keep that feel.
I also wanted to do right by Montoni's character, recast in my story as Victor. We are told that Montoni had always planned to keep Emily St. Aubert captive but his interaction with her was...confusing. I said before in another post that he was sort of asexual toward her and it made no sense. He had already gotten her to sign over her properties. He had already degraded her character and place in life at the castle. Why would he keep her around forever? To shine his shoes? I don't think so. If he had already broken so many boundaries of decency with her and he was planning to hold onto her forever then what was his motivation to show any further restraint? What did he get out the deal? Ann Radcliffe left this deliberately untouched...and she did write it in the late eighteenth century so I can't blame her for not spelling it out.
But, in my version, I wanted to address Montoni's desires and how he views the heroine. And because I decided to write the adaptation as more of a realistic view, showing the real dangers that the heroine is in rather than having her faint over her real and imagined fears, it allowed me to add a lot of darkness back into the story through her interaction with Victor and Finley, two deliciously evil characters that are both combinations of all the bad guys in the original story.
So the point of all this explanation is that this is a very dark story with adult topics. It has the most dark scenes by far of any story I've ever written. And even through editing I kept most of the original content, only softening a few phrases that I felt were a little too explicit for my hand to have typed. However, in short, I wouldn't let my teenage daughter read this.
So I guess it's a good thing I don't have one.
Next step is to print it out and see if anyone else can read through the story and form an opinion.
Maybe I will take a page from Victor and hold someone captive in my fortress until they have gotten through the draft and given me their opinion. What's that, you say? I'm not supposed to learn from the evil character in the story? Oh shoot. Alright, plan b. I will try to find a content reader the hard way.
Amelia Rider, the first unedited draft
to
Amelia Rider, the first edited draft.
This means that I finally got to read through my story for the first time and I edited it along the way.
My total word count now stands at 73,535 words.
I added a net total of 3,491 words and 6 extra pages.
My first take on reading through it:
Not bad, if I do say so myself.
Amelia Rider is a modern adaptation of The Mysteries of Udolpho, sans the mysteries. There are many reasons why I stripped the story of the mystery story lines but those reasons are not important here. Suffice to say that I did it and Amelia Rider took on a new life of her own, while running a parallel course to Emily St. Aubert of The Mysteries of Udolpho.
That being said, after I stripped the story of the mysteries I was left with a story that was happier and brighter than it ought to have been. The Mysteries of Udolpho (if you can get past the fainting and hysterics of the women) is inherently a dark and complicated tale and I wanted to keep that feel.
I also wanted to do right by Montoni's character, recast in my story as Victor. We are told that Montoni had always planned to keep Emily St. Aubert captive but his interaction with her was...confusing. I said before in another post that he was sort of asexual toward her and it made no sense. He had already gotten her to sign over her properties. He had already degraded her character and place in life at the castle. Why would he keep her around forever? To shine his shoes? I don't think so. If he had already broken so many boundaries of decency with her and he was planning to hold onto her forever then what was his motivation to show any further restraint? What did he get out the deal? Ann Radcliffe left this deliberately untouched...and she did write it in the late eighteenth century so I can't blame her for not spelling it out.
But, in my version, I wanted to address Montoni's desires and how he views the heroine. And because I decided to write the adaptation as more of a realistic view, showing the real dangers that the heroine is in rather than having her faint over her real and imagined fears, it allowed me to add a lot of darkness back into the story through her interaction with Victor and Finley, two deliciously evil characters that are both combinations of all the bad guys in the original story.
So the point of all this explanation is that this is a very dark story with adult topics. It has the most dark scenes by far of any story I've ever written. And even through editing I kept most of the original content, only softening a few phrases that I felt were a little too explicit for my hand to have typed. However, in short, I wouldn't let my teenage daughter read this.
So I guess it's a good thing I don't have one.
Next step is to print it out and see if anyone else can read through the story and form an opinion.
Maybe I will take a page from Victor and hold someone captive in my fortress until they have gotten through the draft and given me their opinion. What's that, you say? I'm not supposed to learn from the evil character in the story? Oh shoot. Alright, plan b. I will try to find a content reader the hard way.
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