What did you show them? The Sebastian I remember from the first book wasn't evil; he was spoiled and opportunistic and male in a very bad way. Maybe that's where you lost it in translation?

Well, he's gotten worse--add misogyny and an epic ability to justify his own flaws and blame them upon others. But he's not meant to be Pure Evil, so I've got CPs saying, "But I felt sorry for him at this point," or, "I can understand why he acted this way, especially if Anna acted the same way she's acting around Jack." And I'm all, "Nooo! Anna good! Anna heroine! Anna normal! Sebastian mysogynistic asshole! You're suppose to HATE him!"

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But that makes him one-dimensional. Was there something you showed between the first and second book, to make him get that much worse?

Put it this way. If your readerr only has the second one to go on, and you're portraying him as a complete asshole with nothing to recommend him, then you've got a problem. Because Anna is very definitely a sympathetic character. Yet she married him.

So, if you've done a good job with Anna, the reader is going to blink, and say okay, there had to have been SOME reason she hooked up with him in the first place. And they're going to look for sympathetic bits of him to relate to Anna.

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I read a new-to-me author whose voice has certain similarities to my own, only he Kicks. My. Ass. Especially WRT description, at which I am lousy.

Speaking as a reader, most description (even passages by authors who excel at it) puts me to sleep. Write like you write, and forget how he writes.

As for Sebastian, I haven't read much of your WiP, but you did have me Beta the section where Anna and Jack met. Sebastian appeared in that section. I didn't like him.

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But that makes him one-dimensional.

Well, the thing is, I don't think I've made him one-dimensional. And that seems to be the problem. My CPs are looking at every hint of sympathetic behavior or every attitude that seems horrible from our 2005 perspective but would be normal for 1811 and saying, "But does it really make sense that Anna would be THAT bitter, or that Jack would be feeling such a pure hatred that he's almost wishing Sebastian were still alive so he could kill him himself?"

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Speaking as a reader, most description (even passages by authors who excel at it) puts me to sleep. Write like you write, and forget how he writes.

Trust me, this description isn't boring. There isn't a lot of it, but what there is, is wonderful. In a case where I've been to the region he's describing, I'm all, "OMG! Yes! That's exactly what it's like!" And when I set his set-piece battle scene next to mine, it just makes me want to cry for the pathetic, bloodless inadequacy of what I'd meant to be a gripping, horrific passage.

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What Deb said.

You've got to make readers understand why Anna married him, even if he was as misogynistic and selfish as you want him to be, and you've got to make it a compelling reason, because you still want her to be intelligent and sympathetic.

Also, what Cindy said.

Really long passages of description, no matter how well written, make me skim. Love Laura Kinsale, for instance -- skimmed half of the descriptions of Jervaulx Castle because I just didn't care as much as she did what it looked like. Don't compare. Write what matters to you, and make sure you do that to the best of your ability.

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Really long passages of description, no matter how well written, make me skim.

That's the thing. These aren't long at all. They're just good. Telling details that bring the story to sensory life.

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What everyone else said about description. I always appreciate someone who can write a brief metaphor that paints the picture in a couple of sentences so I get a clear pic of the setting or the dress, or the feeling, so I can move onto the story quickly. Otherwise I just feel like someone was cheating with page fillers. It's sort of the same reason I'm suspicious of hotdogs, except with hotdogs, you can't separate out the soylent green from the beef.

Maybe marrying Sebastian is one of Anna's flaws. Maybe he was kind to animals, small children, and the invalids in the local consumption hospice as well as being a misogynist. Maybe young Anna thought the good things negated the bad and Learned an Important Lesson. It doesn't take away from Anna's heroism, makes her more likeable, if she made a crappy (yet common) mistake a lot of women make by marrying a jerk.

I'm probably talking out of my ass since I haven't read it, but if Anna is so likeable, and clearly our heroine, wouldn't it be enough to tell the reader that Sebastian was a mistake she regrets? Since they already she her character as "good" then it automatically puts him in the "bad" column.

Am I totally talking out of my ass?

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That's the thing. These aren't long at all. They're just good. Telling details that bring the story to sensory life.

The key word here is "sensory". Description is the ultimate show-tool: the reader - and the writer - should feel it.

Here. From Shirley Jackson (bloody goddess, talk about wanting to genuflect and chant "I'm not worthy" ten times for humility purposes), The Haunting of Hill House. Stay with me, I'm trying to make a point:

...the face of Hill House seemed awake, with a watchfulness from the blank windows and a touch of glee in the eyebrow of a cornice.

Almost any house, caught unexpectedly or at an odd angle, can turn a deeply humorous look on a watching person; even a mischievous little chimney, or a dormer like a dimple, can catch up the beholder with a sense of fellowship; but a house arrogant and hating, never off guard, can only be evil.

and

This house, which seemed somehow to have formed itself, flying together into its own powerful pattern under the hands of its builders, fitting itself into its own construction of lines and angles, reared its great head back against the sky without concession to humanity. It was a house without kindness, never be meant to be lived in, not a fit place for people or for love or for hope. Exorcism cannot alter the countenance of a house; Hill House would stay as it was until it was destroyed.

Now - a few paragraphs later, when Eleanor has got up the nerve to get out of her car and walk up the stairs and ring the bell:

Trying not to look up at the house - and she could not have told its colour, or its style, or its size, except that it was enormous and dark, looking down over her....

OK. I typed that look at Hill House - seen through Eleanor's eyes - and my palms are sweating. And yet, she herself retained nothing of its so-called description; what she retained was the purely visceral, the sense of menace and evil coming off the damned thing in waves.

edit: damned kitten in lap.

The point I was going for is that description is there for the reader, the writer and the characters to take away what matters. It doesn't matter to Eleanor that Hill House is cream stone, or has black window frames, or leaded glass in the upstairs windows, or whatever: what she, and Jackson, and I all took away from that block of description was that the house is sentient, arrogant, dangerous and bad.

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About to disappear for most of the day, so I'm not ignoring points, I just won't have time to respond to them until sometime this evening.

Really, I'm mostly just whining here. I'll get through this, and I'll figure out a way to achieve the effect I want. It's just that I was already feeling daunted by the amount of editing I knew I'd have to do before I got my CPs' comments on this week's scene, so I'm all, "What, you're telling me this part needs a major overhaul TOO? Noooo!!!!"

Because I think the reason my first book didn't sell or land me an agent is largely because I didn't edit it enough. So I know I need to do better this time, but I'm daunted by the magnitude of the task.

OK, being pulled toward the door....

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