Turns out that as much as my first set of beta readers liked my book, it ain’t perfect.
A number of them picked up on the same issue, and when more than one notices the same thing, you have a problem.
My problem is the bad guy.
In fact, my problem is three problems about the bad guy.
- He has two courses of action he can choose from. Path A leads to a lot of conflict for Lyra as the bad guy strives to get what he wants. Path B could lead to the bad guy’s specific goal, but would barely impact my heroic protagonist. Therefore, I need him to choose Path A, or I got nothin’. Yet my beta readers asked why didn’t he choose Path B? It seems easier. Uh, yeah, well, umm…? Now I have to figure out why he won’t choose Path B and make it make sense in the context of the story.
- His motivation–why he wants what he wants and why he’s willing to tangle with Lyra to get it. The info is in the story, but it’s obviously not clear enough if my beta readers are asking about it.
- His backstory. This is tied into his motivation–what happened to him in the past to make him want to confront Lyra in the present. This sequence of events (before my story even opens) perfectly explains his motivation and his choices (including the nefarious Path A). And it’s all crystal clear in my head. But alas, it seems my beta readers can’t see into my head. For some reason, they expect all of my thoughts to be clearly spelled out on the page.
The good news is that I have solutions to all those problems. Yay! I’m psyched. I got this.
Except for one tiny little thing.
The implementation of those solutions.
That’s all. Just that.
(Damn.)