GOSSIP

Current Project:The Baby's Bodyguard
Status:halfway

The title up there is a teaser, a hook. This is not about gossip. This is about a character who resides in my current WIP. She is a gossip monger (although she may also have another agenda.) Last week I wrote her coming into my heroine's office and with eyes dancing, telling her scandalous office scuttlebutt that concerns the heroine herself. The gossipy character claims she doesn't believe what she's heard, not for one minute, but it's obvious she's having a grand time relating this distressing tidbit.

Yesterday I read the scene again and it bothered me. It took me a few minutes to figure out why. At first I thought, well, that's how people like this relate news. They smile, they twitter, they look for your reaction to feed the rumor and help it grow, kind of like adding yeast to bread dough. That way they can find a new audience and include your reaction.

And maybe that's true when the information concerns a third person. But what about when the gossip is talking to the subject of the rumor, what then? That's the difference and that's what I'd gotten wrong. That's when the gossip uses a serious voice and glances around to make sure you're alone. That's when they say, "I have something to tell you and you're not going to like it much." That's when the only difference between a friend warning you there's danger out there and a gossip fishing for more ammunition or a vicarious thrill at being the bearer of bad news is their intent. And because most of us know who our friends and our enemies are (and are instinctual experts at picking up non-verbal signals concerning motivation), we tend to know which is which.

And then I started thinking about my heroine's reaction. Considering the great lengths she's gone to to protect this information, she's sure laid back about hearing it's all over the office now. And if she doesn't react more, even internally, then why are we having this scene? So, she needs to be tweaked, too, and really, if I hadn't caught this yesterday and it was closer to the end where it might not get so many re-readings, it might have gone through the editing process because I think it would have struck enough accord with a busy reader that she might have glossed over it. Hopefully not, but it's easier to fix it now. Way easier when I can pull the threads as I go and not reweave the fabric afterwards.

Wouldn't you think it would get easier? Wouldn't you think there would come a point where the number of years you've spent on the earth multiplied by the number of times you've written a scene divided by the stars in Orion's belt would make the process smoother?

We've discussed rewriting to add details and color, to clean up awkward phrasing and weed out redundancies -- do you also use it to check that your characters are behaving in a consistent manner with their personalities and goals and that you've actually shown appropriate motivations and reactions? Do you ever find you've given the wrong physical clues for a character's actions or missed opportunities for a better reaction to information? If so, when in the process do you tend to find them?