I'm continuing to work on planning my Myristicae story this week. My teacher had some good ideas about changing the location of the opening scene. The story originally began with my character, Hazel, transitioning in an abandoned alley. But that doesn't really fit in with the naturalistic theme of a a plant-human race. So I'm planning to rewrite the beginning of the story so that she's called to the forest by a mysterious force from a dying member of the Myristicae. She arrives at the sacred cave of the tree people, the place their species first began. In the cave, the dying tree gives her life force to Hazel so that she can transition and take her place in the Myristicae community because there must always be twelve members.
I liked this suggestion because it helps the story makes more sense overall. It follows that the tree people would only come into being at the one sacred place and not in the middle of town, which is full of regular humans. For all of the Myristicae to have the same experience of changing into tree people in the sacred cave would unify them as a people.
When I write, I don't usually outline beforehand. Big surprise. So incongruities don't usually occur to me because clearly my brain thought it made sense at the time. I'm sure outlining would help, but a lot of the time I feel like I have to get something on the page before I can think about where it's going next. I'm not sure what stage the most productive outlining would happen, so maybe I'm wrong and starting with an outline will be the best thing for me to try. Either way, I appreciate the feedback so that I can make revisions that are bigger than just a sentence or two. That makes me feel like I'm growing leaps and bounds as a writer, even though it's really just my story that's improving. Once I make the revisions, I'll post this section of the story for you to read. :)
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