Melinda Morley

I’m revising my novel. I’m getting close to finishing this round of revisions, but I’m coming up on some rough spots.

I happened across this article on my local news station:

Feds back removal of 5M pounds of Utah lake carp

Holy cow that is a lot of carp. In Utah carp is considered a junk fish. They don’t have a commercial use for them and they’re all going to the landfill. Millions of rotting fish is not a pretty sight. The carp are not native to Utah Lake and are taking over and eating the vegetation that the June sucker fish (a native only to Utah Lake) hides in. And poor June is becoming endangered.

Kinda reminds me of my my WIP right now. There are no carp, none. But there is some crap. (carp/crap, get it? They don’t pay me the big bucks for nothing. Oh, wait. . . )

Crap which comes in the form of:

• really boring detail, where I just tell you what happens and I even use passive verbs, like was and were: as fun as staring into an empty fish tank.
• flat characters who run around as brainless fish without a clear purpose.
• scenes with character motivations’ as clear as the murky bottom of a lake.
• cliche dialogue–how I loathe cliche dialogue. It so easy to write, just like those fish are easy to catch, but both of them, well, stink.

Fish by fish I’m cleaning up my draft (even with no Federal funding–which would be really nice). I’m weaving the description and the action together like the June sucker weaving its way happily through the seaweed. (Do you call it seaweed if it’s in a lake?) And dialogue as witty as two Feds that are negotiating 1.5 million dollar fish deals. Or not. And soon I’m going to have scenes as pretty as a nice clear blue lake with happy little June suckers in the bottom and no crap, I mean, carp. Whatever.