I was recently editing Lost in a Heartbeat for voice when I came to the following flashback:
“So where’s your boyfriend?” he asked.
“How do you know I have one?” I did, of course, but Liam wasn’t there. There were only a few weeks left of summer vacation then he’d be leaving for college, so I didn’t think there was anything wrong flirting with this guy. Neither relationship was going to go anywhere, either way.
But I realized the main character, Calleigh, wasn’t the kind of girl to flirt with another guy when she had a boyfriend. Even if the boyfriend was going away to college and she'd no intention of having a long distance relationship. So I tweaked it:
“So where’s your boyfriend?” he asked.
“What makes you think I have one?” Liam and I had broken up only a few days before that. Or rather, I had dumped a Blue Raspberry Slurpee on his lap after Alejandra told me the latest gossip. He’d been caught getting all hot and steamy with a junior varsity cheerleader at a party just the week before. We hadn’t officially broken up, but I figured the Slurpee incident pretty much said it all.
Great except for one problem. Yep, you guessed it. It caused a snowball effect. Other sections then had to be rewritten because of this one little change.
Yes, it was a lot of work, but it was worth it. The result was a domino effect that started with Liam cheating on Calleigh, and which resulted in the story problem. Now you see why I love editing. *grins*
Has this happened to you? Has one little change in your novel led to a snowball effect that you were excited about? One you never expected when you wrote your first draft—or edited your fifth?