I had a bit of a revelation last night, but I haven’t been able to share it until now. So without further ado, here’s my revelation:
Last night I was watching the second episode of the new TV series Hannibal, which for those of you who don’t know is a prequel to the Hannibal Lecter novel Red Dragon. As I watching it I was seeing all these little things they were doing to develop the characters that the author of Red Dragon, Thomas Harris, hadn’t done when he originally wrote the novel. It struck me then that I had committed a grevious error in my own serial killer thriller, Snake: I hadn’t gone into any sort of character development whatsoever.
I hadn’t gone into the pasts of any of the characters, only focusing on the events of the story and what immediately precipitated those events. I had not gone into any detail on why the Snake was so twisted, why the female lead was so defiant and spunky, why the villain was who he was, none of that! I’d left it all up to the imaginati0n of the reader, but now I realize that might’ve been a mistake. I mean, the reasons why we emotionally invest in characters is that we want to know them, not just what they do in a story.
So I’m going to go over the manuscript one more time and see where I can add in more character development. Perhaps then I know it’ll be ready for publication. Heck, my beta reader’s on board with it, so why not?
I’ll let you know how things go after the third draft is done. Hopefully it’ll all go well.
Rami Ungar The Writer 