Writing is rewriting

So I reworked substantial portions of the first two chapters of the book I'm still trying to sell--notwithstanding that the test readers seem to have been pretty positive, it still seemed to me a number of actually fairly central characters were giving off a suspicious odour of cardboard in their dialogue scenes, particularly earlier on. And there were two bits in those first two chapters that were really getting on my nerves.

I'm not sure if I'm (a) incredibly picky about dialogue, or (b) actually usually right that my first take at any dialogue scene will read like it was written for a bad daytime drama. I suspect it's principally the latter, with a bit of the former mixed in for good measure.

As to why those two bits in particular were so naggingly wrong (and were still so naggingly wrong, even after the rest of the book had got to the point I was pretty happy with it), I don't suppose it's so suprising. Coming into it cold after so many years effectively outta fiction, it rather makes sense the first few bits would be the roughest. And I didn't know the characters so well yet, was really just getting to know them.

As to why it took so long: I'd felt for a while that something had to be done there, but the bits were actually so far into the 'what the hell do I do with this' stage that I wasn't sure where to begin before now in cleaning it up.

In any case, I think I nailed it this time. I'm a lot happier with it now. They now talk like the people I now know them to be, and it comes off as a lot more interesting (or so I say). All I had to do was stop dicking around with the cosmetic fiddling and do some real surgery.