Yaaaay for foolish boys

In the original version of Bones of Faerie, my protagonist (Liza) called one of the secondary characters (Matthew) a “foolish boy.” The phrase echoed through the book, and how Liza spoke it changed over time: first with irritation, but later with something approaching affection.

When I revised the book this fall I made some changes to Liza, though, and as a result the “foolish boy” lines didn’t quite fit–but they were, literally, the last thing to go. I hung onto them out of a sort of fondness through the first two rounds of editorial revision, and only when, the day before copyedits, my editor asked if we really needed them did I finally edit them away.

Anyway, just a few days ago, as I was working on TE, one of my tertiary characters turned to one of my secondary characters and whispered, in a not-quite-human-voice, “Foolish boy.”

This makes me smile.

I do wonder whether I’ll actually get to keep it this time, though–or whether this will become something I’ll be writing and deleting from manuscripts for the rest of my writing life. 🙂

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *