by
Kim Van Sickler
The
time feels right to get my human trafficking book out into the marketplace.
After
a year of, “Great story, but too edgy for us,” I’m ready to self-publish. I’ve
polished the manuscript and have a convincing cheerleader in Dr. Jacquelyn
Meshelemiah, a human trafficking educator at The Ohio State University. She encourages
me by insisting that my book captures the essence of human trafficking better
than any fictional account she’s ever read. She wants to make it required
reading for her massive open online course on human trafficking.
So
now what?
I contacted CreateSpace, the
self-pub arm of Amazon for an editorial evaluation. The evaluation took about
two weeks and covers issues like plot, structure, and pacing. Overall I’m left
with plenty of encouraging comments like this one under the subhead: Writing
Style:
The
overall style and tone works for the manuscript, given the plot and genre. The syntax,
diction, and word choice are appropriate. The author has a gift for
incorporating the other four senses (sound, taste, touch, and feel) besides
sight into her prose. This works especially well for the sex and rape scenes.
For instance, on page 103, it states: “Me on top doing all the work while he
lies there like an engorged tick. A tick that oozes fast food and coffee from
his large pores.” The author’s voice remains consistent, since she retains a
young adult, female voice quality throughout the entire book.
However, there are areas
where change is urged. And now I’m faced with deciding whether I am going to
venture down those roads or not. The edit recommends I change the name of the
book because it “sounds too vague and almost happy-sounding”. Instead, I should
reference the darker, more disturbing nature of the story in my title. Even
though I consciously chose an innocuous title. One that conjures unremarkable images
of an outing with girlfriends, a common place for teenagers to escape Mom and
Dad, flirt, and shop. An unremarkable place with pitfalls that every teenager
should be aware of.
So do I want to change the
title to something darker? I’ll have to ponder that.
The suggestion for change I
will really struggle with is the one to nix the three points of view and
proceed with my lesbian trafficking victim as the main character. This isn’t
the first time I’ve been told that feisty Megan is my strongest character. The
evaluator wants the other two victims to become Megan’s back-ups. The reason? “Their
backgrounds and experiences are not different enough to warrant separate
characters”, even though she felt that, “[A]ll the characters give variety and
yet do not confuse the reader”. Again, a trio of victims versus one victim was
a conscious decision of mine. The repetitive nature of the indignities they
suffer underscores the trafficking nature of the crimes against them. They are
cattle. They are a small part of a growing business enterprise: the sale of
human flesh for sexual gratification.
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| http://kailadunn.wordpress.com/page/3/ |
Writing from the POVs of the
three victims is supposed to amplify the growing magnitude of the problem. I’m
fairly sure it’s something I don’t want to change, even if the evaluator thinks
writing solely from Megan’s perspective will make the story “more compelling”.
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| http://safelibraries.blogspot.com/2013/11/LibrariesHarmVictims.html |
But the suggestion to amp up
some of my setting descriptions, to make them more “evocative and concise”,
including the “suburban upper-middle class setting from which the girls are
kidnapped”, rings true with me. Settings have always been something I need to
go back and flesh out. I will definitely read through the manuscript again and
do this.
Have you ever felt strongly against
incorporating an agent’s/editor’s suggested changes to your story? What have
you done about it?
