Interesting exercise

All right, this isn't one of the post topics promised in the last update, but I still think it's of some interest, simply because I hadn't really thought given the matter a great deal of thought before.

At the Atlanta conference, as I believe I mentioned, I pitched a book called Controlled Burn, which I'd finished in draft form a couple of years back and had never quite known what to do with. I started writing it intending it to be literary mainstream fiction, but it turned out to be something a little different. (Or maybe it could be considered literary mainstream, but I'd prefer not to give it away, thank you!) Finally I determined it was women's fiction, pitched it as such, and got an editor interested in having a look at first-3-and-a-synopsis, with a few changes.

One of the changes was a switch from first to third person, in part so I could incorporate the points of view of other characters.

I've done this before with short fiction and it was a fairly straightforward process. But in this case, it's necessitating pretty much a complete rewrite of some sections. The main character spent a lot of time alone in the original draft, and developed a very introspective, moody first-person voice--and a bad tendency to info-dump in the form of internal monologue, which seems far more glaringly obvious when I change the POV.

I think it will be a much stronger piece when I'm done: tighter yet richer, and with better character development for the characters who aren't the current sole narrator. But wow... I'm glad I revised my initial "Sure, I'll get it to you in two weeks!" estimate to "How about after Labor Day?" and that the editor was agreeable.