Chewing cardboard...

[khiemtran]

One consequence of starting over is that it's made me realise how weak some of the characters are, especially in the first half of the story. This is something of a surprise to me, as I've always thought of the characters as how they appear at the end of the book. I didn't realise how much some of them appear as little more than plot devices, until they start getting more key scenes. There are good reasons as to why they don't get more scenes earlier, but they're all to do with the original structure of the story. Now that I'm throwing that away, a whole lot of new possibilities have opened up.