A lot of words come to mind when re-reading the first draft, few of them complimentary. Words like naive, immature and embarrassing come to mind. Just how old is this story?

Calder never liked the first draft Scott. “He was,” she said, “A self-pitying idiot and all he did was sit around and feel sorry for himself.” Only, of course, she said it a lot more strongly than that.

Scott improves in the second draft but here you can see just how far he has to go to become a believable, likeable character.

He’s not the only problem character. Caid’s denigration of Scott’s abilities are out of character for the Caid we envision. Even the secondary characters—Elna, Storm, Mathers, Tull, Kraa, et al—have a long way to go.

You can tell by the characterisation that I had more to do with the initial draft than Calder did. My characterisation is very weak, and for some reason I really don’t do likeable characters. I don’t know why. I need Calder’s input to make them people we care enough to read about.

As for part two—oh my goodness. All one can say is, “Ouch.”

Part two of this draft falls apart totally. On re-reading this draft I am actually surprised we even revisited the story. The characters are almost different people, albeit equally unbearable. They see-saw between personas. They seem to have no logic behind what they do.

The policemen and the way they race off into the unknown with no back-up, no plan—any self respecting policeman, or woman, would throw out the story in disgust as soon as that happened.

We can see just how far we have come as a writing team, though. While the first drafts we write now (in later novels) are still not good, at least the characters are better. And much more likeable.