So I stalled on Band Geeks back in August. You can see my July post about hitting a rough spot. I finished my revision of Emma’s book last week and I’ve now returned to BG with the determination to finish this thing. But first, I need to get back into the story.
So I’m reading. The first couple of chapters are…eh. They’re important, to show the causes for Kayla’s actions throughout the rest of the book, but they didn’t wow me. Now that I’ve gotten farther into the book I’m enjoying it more, but those first few chapters will be the part that makes me pull out my hair. They need work, but I haven’t figured out yet what exactly needs to be done.
For now I’ll try to ignore them while I read through the rest and then get the ending actually written. Later I can get my test readers to tell me what they think about the beginning and get some advice from other writers. Since it’s been a few months since I last looked at the story, I’m amusing myself with some of the jokes I threw in and had forgotten about. The main character, Kayla, is very snarky toward the guy who likes her (and who she secretly likes but won’t admit). They have a lot of great lines, firing insults back and forth. Kayla is very different from the MCs of my other two young adult books, Libby and Emma. Kayla is bratty at times and somewhat selfish. It’s a difficult balance to write her as a likeable character while also showing her faults and her exaggeration of events. She won’t admit how much she needs attention and reassurance and tells herself that she can handle everything on her own, so she pushes people away and then blames them for ignoring her.
But she’s also very fun to write and is a good person deep down. She just needs to work through her problems and grow up a bit.