I learn new things with every book I write, even the ones that I ultimately never finish. Within These Lines probably taught me more than just about any book I’ve ever written because there were so many unique things about writing the story. Like:

• I’ve never sold a book so quickly to a publisher. Typically, I have my “story spark” months before I start writing, and often years before I sell it. Within These Lines went from being a blip of an idea to contract negotiations within a month, so I didn’t feel as prepared to start the book as I typically do.
• I had never written a book about real people and real events. There’s a big difference between a book like The Lost Girl of Astor Street that uses the historical era as an elaborate set piece and Within These Lines that’s attempting to accurately portray real tragedies. That comes with an extra weight of responsibility.
• I had never written a book that dealt with such a hot and sensitive issue. Immigration and racism are in the news constantly right now, and the evacuation of Japanese Americans during WWII is a tender and painful chapter of America’s history.
• Craft-wise, I had never written a story with two first-person POVs, nor had I ever written a teenage boy POV, nor had I ever written from the POV of a minority. (Well, Skylar is a minority, but it’s not something that was focused on in that series.)

One thing that was NOT different about writing Within These Lines is that yet again I finished the first draft and thought, “Nope.That wasn’t quite it.”

I had hoped that after all my study of story structure, and this being my third historical novel (one is unpublished), I would at least get closer with my first attempt. But, yet again, I ended up scrapping about 40% of my first draft. Nearly all of what I tossed was from the second half of the story.

Here’s where I veered off track in the second half of my book, and here’s what I learned while fixing it:

1. I failed to make sure that all my conflict was crucial to the main story goal.

You know that writing advice, “If things are boring, have someone come in with a gun”? I learned that’s dangerous advice, because if you pick the wrong “gun” to spice things up, your story can get hijacked, and you might find yourself writing a book you didn’t mean to. Which is what I did.

Right after the big middle scene of Within These Lines, I hit the wall that I normally hit. When I’m planning out a book, I can typically “see” the first half of it pretty clearly, but then after the midpoint, the rest of the story often feels fuzzy. I often go through a bit of an emotional crisis as I panic that I won’t be able to figure out the rest of my book.

Taichi’s storyline was built around historical events at his concentration camp, so I felt really clear on how his story would progress.

Evalina gave me trouble, though. She’s a very aggressive, active character, which is great … except when you don’t totally know what they should be doing. 

None of what I’m about to share is in the final version of the book, so I promise I’m not spoiling anything.

In the original version of the book, Evalina was supposed to be convincing her Italian former-mobster uncle to work with Navy intelligence. Instead of her going to Alcatraz all the time (which wouldn’t be very historically accurate since families could only visit once a month) I had her uncle refer her to someone else. 

I didn’t know what the character was going to be like, but I felt really bored by what was happening for Evalina. On a whim, I decided to liven things up with a brand new character who brought clearer and more obvious danger to Evalina. (He was the metaphorical gun that was bringing into the room.) 

Evalina goes to the docks anticipating meeting a middle aged mobster type guy, like her uncle, only to find a refined, articulate, good-looking young man in his early twenties. I named him Lorenzo, and I loved writing any scene with him, because he was so interesting. 

By the time I got to Evalina’s climax of the story, I realized I had given so much page time to Lorenzo, that he should be involved. I decided that he was on the run and trying to hide out with her, and she was trying to get away. He has a gun, etc.  All of this built in lots of conflict and suspense–great!

Except … not great. 

BECAUSE THAT WASN’T THE STORY I WAS TRYING TO WRITE.

How had I wound up here? Because I didn’t consider my story goal when I created Lorenzo. I just threw him in because I was bored and unclear, and thought, “What story doesn’t need a cute mobster guy to liven things up?” (Um, this story. A story about young people who truly love each other and are separated by racism and concentration camps does not  need a cute mobster with a gun. It just doesn’t.)

And that’s where the manuscript sat for six weeks while I took my pre-editing break and tried to figure out what exactly was wrong with my book.

2. I failed to write a first and second half of a book that matched.

So, in hindsight it seems obvious what’s wrong with my book, but it never feels obvious when you’re in it, right? When I reread the first draft, I knew something was wrong, but I truly couldn’t see that my interesting mobster guy needed to be chopped. 

One day, as I listened to the Helping Writers Become Authors podcast, K. M. Weiland identified my problem:

Anton Chekhov’s famous advice that “if in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired” is just as important in reverse: If you’re going to have a character fire a gun later in the book, that gun should be introduced in the first act. The story you create in the following acts can only be assembled from the parts you’ve shown the reader in this first act.

K.M. Weiland, “The Secrets of Story Structure, Pt 3: The First Act”

Even though my problems were actually in my second and third acts, I knew she had just nailed what was wrong. The first half of my book set up the story of true love between an Italian-American teenage girl and a Japanese-American teenage boy during WWII. The second half of my book did not match the first in tone or topic. I had to pick which story I actually wanted to tell.

I gritted my teeth and scrapped everything of Evalina’s in the second half. I rebuilt her arc in a way that was consistent with the story I wanted to tell. I cut Lorenzo entirely. (Though when I added a character later, I chose that name for him as a private nod to my early mistake.)

3. I picked accuracy over telling a good story.

Like most historical fiction writers, I am obsessive about accuracy. I will lose an hour of my life trying to figure out details like, “Did the doors at Manzanar have locks on them?” Like if I get it wrong, someone will take away my historical writer status.

A desire to  be accurate is a great quality for all writers, but especially historical. At the end of the day, however, we are not textbook writers. We’re novelists.

We’re writing a story, and if your characters are fictional people set in a true event, it’s okay to choose 90% accuracy if it means a better story. 

I desperately wanted to be 100% accurate about the evacuation for the Japanese Americans. One of the struggles I ran into is that history is told by people, and it’s remembered a little differently by everyone. There were events that I read about in history books, put into my manuscript, only to be told by a park ranger at Manzanar National Historic Site, “We have no records that this event ever happened.” And I would say, “But I read that! It was in this person’s auto-biography.” She would say, “Okay … but we have no record that it actually happened. I don’t think it’s true.”

The detail that I initially chose to be accurate about that ultimately messed up my novel is that many of the Japanese Americans were not immediately sent to the concentration camps. Instead they were sent to makeshift concentration camps on fair grounds and race tracks while the government worked to get the permanent places built. 

I wanted to talk about that very badly. So in the first draft, I had Taichi’s family (which is a fictional family) go to one of the temporary centers, and they didn’t end up in Manzanar until 2/3 of the way through the book.

Well, that’s a problem when the climax of the novel is a historically-accurate and complex riot that took place near the one-year anniversary of Pearl Harbor. When I didn’t have them arriving until the 60% mark of the book and the riot took place around the 85% mark, there simply wasn’t enough time on the page to build it up.

So I made the decision to cut the temporary center and send Taichi’s family to Manzanar immediately, even though it chafed to lose that bit of accuracy.

I’m positive I’ll never write a perfect first draft, but I’m hopeful that I won’t make these specific mistakes again in future books. What writing mistakes have you made and learned from?