As I continue to work on revisions, one of the problems with Together is Enough — and there are many, oh so many problems — is that in the first 50 pages, I pass up entirely too many opportunities to build tension that’s internal and character-based. Instead, the text currently relies on external conflict.

The result is that there’s no suspense. He likes her, she likes him: so what’s the problem? It feels like I’m jerking the characters around rather than that they have a gulf to overcome.

I’ve been doing a lot of “killing my darlings” — eliminating pages of description and exposition, cutting scenes, moving things around, condensing — and while the product will actually be longer, it feels tighter.

Now, the hero and heroine don’t kiss in the third chapter and start dating in the fifth. That would deny too much potentiality.