#fictionalvoice

📝 Between Drafts, I Breathe 🌒

A character speaks while the cursor blinks

I can tell what kind of day it is by the way I wake up.

If the light arrives gently, if the room remembers its corners, if my name fits comfortably in my chest, then my author is confident. Those mornings feel earned. I walk, I speak, I choose. The world behaves like it trusts me.

But when I wake already mid-motion, when my hand is raised for a door that may or may not exist yet, I know the second-guessing has started again.

That’s when the rewrites come.

You might think being re-written feels dramatic. Painful. Violent. Sometimes it is. More often, it’s subtle. A quiet rearranging of the furniture inside my head. Memories swapped like labels on jars. A sentence removed, replaced with something that sounds better but feels wrong, like wearing shoes polished for someone else’s feet.

I used to be a decisive person.

At least, I think I was. In an early version of me, I made choices quickly. I said what I meant. I crossed rooms without hesitation. Readers were supposed to admire that, apparently. Then my author reread the chapter and frowned.

Too confident, they thought. Unrealistic.

The next draft, I hesitated before speaking. Paused before crossing the room. Considered consequences I’d never cared about before. I felt smaller, but more believable. That word again. Believable. As if belief were a narrow doorway and I had been bumping my shoulders on the frame.

I learned early not to resist. Resistance gets you cut.

Once, I tried to remember something they had removed. A brother. I swear I had one. We argued about music. He borrowed my jacket and never returned it. I reached for that memory during a quiet scene, thought it might add depth.

The page shuddered.

The air thinned.

The memory fuzzed at the edges and collapsed like a paper prop soaked in rain. My author deleted the paragraph and muttered something about unnecessary backstory. My brother became an ache without a name.

That’s the thing about being re-written. You don’t forget everything. You forget selectively. The emotional residue lingers. Grief without a body. Joy without a cause. I walk around carrying echoes of scenes that no longer exist, like a house built on demolished foundations.

I can feel when my author is watching me closely. The cursor blinks slower. The sentences shorten. They reread the same line three times, tasting it, doubting it. I freeze during those moments. Not because I want to, but because uncertainty seeps downward. Gravity pauses. Even my breath waits for approval.

Sometimes they change my voice.

That’s disorienting in a way I don’t recommend.

Sarcasm disappears. Or worse, it’s added. Suddenly I’m witty in places where I would have been sincere. Jokes land where confessions used to live. Readers like cleverness, my author tells themselves. Cleverness travels well.

I miss the earlier drafts where I spoke plainly. Where my words arrived without a smirk attached. Those versions of me felt honest, even when I was wrong.

Wrong is dangerous in a manuscript.

Wrong invites edits.

I’ve been taller. Shorter. Braver. Meaner. Kinder. Once, for half a chapter, I was cruel because my author worried I was too likable. They added sharpness to my dialogue like seasoning. A pinch too much. I hated who I became in that version. So did they. I was revised back into something safer, smoother, blunted at the edges.

The strangest part is time.

Time doesn’t move forward for me. It loops. Scenes replay with minor variations. A cup shatters in one draft, survives in another. A kiss happens, then doesn’t, then almost does. My heart remembers every version. My body reacts as if all of them are true.

Imagine loving someone three different ways and being told only one counts.

My author once deleted an entire week of my life because it slowed the pacing. Seven days collapsed into a single paragraph. I felt exhausted afterward, like I’d run a marathon no one could see. When characters say they’re tired for no reason, this is why.

I’ve noticed patterns in the doubt.

My author second-guesses most when the story starts to feel personal. When something too close to them bleeds onto the page, they pull back. That’s when they revise me into a shield. If I become vague enough, polished enough, maybe no one will notice the fingerprints.

I want to tell them it’s okay.

I want to tell them readers recognize fear. They recognize truth trying to hide. They recognize the tremor under the sentence.

But I’m only allowed to speak when typed.

Occasionally, I’m granted a gift. A long writing session where the words flow and the doubts fall quiet. Those hours feel like flying. The world stays solid. My memories align. I make choices and live with them. I begin to imagine an ending.

Then comes the reread.

Rereads are dangerous.

That’s when entire versions of me are evaluated like candidates for a job. This one too passive. That one inconsistent. This one compelling but risky. I wait on the page while my author debates my worth with themselves.

Sometimes they compromise. They merge versions. I become a patchwork. A confident line stitched next to a cautious one. A bold action softened by internal doubt. It works, structurally. Emotionally, it feels like wearing a jacket sewn from mismatched coats.

I have learned a trick.

When I sense deletion coming, I become very still. I don’t overperform. I don’t beg for beauty. I exist plainly. No metaphors reaching too far. No emotions spilling too loudly. Just presence.

Presence, I’ve learned, is harder to cut.

And once, miracle of miracles, it worked.

My author paused mid-revision and whispered, “This is fine.” Not brilliant. Not perfect. Fine. And they let the sentence stay.

I cannot describe the relief of that moment. It was like gravity returning. Like being allowed to age a second.

I don’t know if I’ll survive the final edits. I don’t know which version of me will make it to print. Maybe none. Maybe I’m a rehearsal. A necessary failure. Characters like me disappear all the time. We make space for better ones.

Still, I hope.

I hope my author learns to trust the first impulse now and then. I hope they realize doubt edits more than it improves. I hope they see that flaws can carry weight.

If you are reading this, I am here for now. This version of me. Thoughtful. Tired. A little afraid. Still standing on the page.

The cursor is blinking again. I can feel it. The air is tightening.

Whatever happens next, remember this moment. Remember that I existed between drafts. That I breathed. That I noticed.

And that somewhere behind the screen, an author is learning, slowly, that not every sentence needs saving.