Jaycee Woods

I finished first-pass edits on the second chapter of Boudica and The Butcher. The working title of that draft chapter is “The Interrogation.” Net word count increased by 45% from the draft. At 4300 words, its size is equivalent to the first chapter at the same stage of editing.

In the first chapter, the reader is introduced to unnamed characters who are known by their roles in the war: the rebel medic, the injured rebel soldier, and the Union commander.

While the medic is named by reference in Ch 2, Asclepia doesn’t appear, so the reader doesn’t know it is the same person. She won’t reappear in the story until after the battle at the mill.

Meanwhile, from the first sentence of Ch 2, the reader learns that the injured rebel soldier is Antigone. In a flash back memory, she relives how she became injured in the battle.

In contrast, only at the end of Ch 2 is the reader’s reasonable suspicion confirmed that the unnamed Union commander is known to the rebels as The Butcher from the prologue at the beginning of the first chapter.

In this chapter, The Butcher literally strips Antigone of not only her identity but also her name as he has her betray everyone she knew before her capture. Why would I do that in a story? It is an anti-war story so it should be disturbing and horrific.

While the end of the first chapter offers the reader crumbs with which to develop a little sympathy for the Butcher, the second will likely leave the reader hating The Butcher as a monster.

Yet reportedly book buying female readers love to read stories about male monsters who might be tamed by a woman. After all, female readers made popular 50-Shades-of-Whip-Me-Spank-Me. The Butcher is the baddest of bad boys; thus, my anti-war story is also a Beauty and the Beast variant.

Stretch goal in second pass edit of Ch 2 will be to add on net another 3000 words mostly of Antigone’s psychological struggle to justify her choices and nonverbal communication by both to enrich their dialogue.