Technical Topics -- Openings

ADVICE THE FIRST -- WRITE THE BEGINNING LAST

Or at least, do the agonizing perfect polish of those first three chapters,
last.

I'm paraphrasing somebody else here ...
can't remeber who just at the moment.

One problem with story openings is that they are technically difficult,
and we write them just when we are least prepared to do so.

We write the opening before we know our characters well,
before we have negotiated the conflicts of Chapters 13 and 22,
before all the 'aha moments' Chapter 8 and Chapter 11.

One way to solve the 'opening problem'
is to sketch out the opening,
finish the ms,
and return to lock down those first three chapters,
last.


ADVICE THE SECOND -- DON'T BE AN AMATEUR

There are some openings
that an agent picks it up and just groans.
Because many many amateur mss start this way.

AAAARRRRGGGGH goes the agent.
You do not want to do this to the nice agent, do you?

Do you want to know what amateur openings look like?

Go thou out to the web and find display sites.
Google -- "writers" "post" "your" "manuscript" "showcase"

Read fifty or a hundred of the offerings.
You only have to read to the point where you know this story sucks.
Look at why you know this story sucks
and don't do that


ADVICE THE THIRD -- SOME STUFF TO PUT IN CHAPTER ONE

Your story has a couple Main Characters. (1)

Your story has something that makes life just hell for an MC. Something that wants to let the air out of his tires and steal his underwear and bite his liver out and chew it up into little pieces and spit it out on the pavement. (2)

Your story also has something an MC would give his right arm up to the elbow for. (3)

Chapter One should contain (1) and either (2) or (3) or both.
It should contain those elements right from the start.

Not the beginning of the element or what will become the element. The element itself.


ADVICE THE FOURTH (AND FINAL) -- STRUCTURE

Do not put in a teaser for a few paragraphs
and then nip away somewhere else --
to yesterday or twenty years ago or Nome, Alaska.

Because wherever you nip to,
it is not as exciting as where you have just been
and the reader knows it.

When you start in a place and time,
with your MC and either (2) or (3) or both,
stay there
for the whole opening scene.


NON-ADVICE --
just an observation.

You can do any durned thing you please,
except bore the reader.
If you write well enough you can start Chapter One with the Vladiivostok telephone directory.
.
.

I may never get out of Chapter Three

I was sitting in Starbucks yesterday, with my eyes closed. I was inside Jess, feeling the blanket she's wearing – she's not wearing anything else; she leads an eventful existence – and every once in a while I'd open my eyes and be back in Starbucks.

When I was Jess, I didn't hear the background music. When I was in Starbucks, I did. A fine jazz sax.

We travel into our story ... not for revision, redrafting, correction or proofing. But the first time, the creating time, we make the journey all the way to our world.



In other news, got the contract for Spymaster's Lady to sign.
Gee.
Thick little thing, isn't it?

Still in Three

I'm doing about the fifth draft of the last half of Chapter Three of JESS.
This is probably the final draft.
But then, I've thought that a couple of times before.

Why I'm doing this ...

When I shortened Chapter One to about half of its former glory
and chucked the prologue overboard, (Remember splash?)

I tossed out lots of Jess POV. The balance has shiftered too far away from her.
I need more Jess POV.
Which -- since I'm covering the same territory -- means less Sebastian POV.

I have beautiful passages in that Sebastian POV. I have clever, insightful, incisive, funny work in Sebastian POV.
(splash)

I have to go back and write the scene from Jess' POV.

I can do that. Yes.
But it's hard to write when you're pouting about stuff you had to throw out.

First Three of Jess

Just about through the final draft of the first three chapters of JESS. It is surprisingly difficult to lick the first three chapters into shape when the rest of the ms is still --- how shall I put this? -- somewhat diffuse.

I have more respect for those folks who can finish and polish just Chapters One through Three, standalone, to submit of send off to contests. Freaking hard.

The Prologue is gone. (splash -- prologue overboard.)
Chapter One has been reduced to a mere nubbins of its original long and winding action.
Chapter Three -- where I am right now -- will now contain two POV flips.

I hate POV flips.
It's holding my fingers to the fire, trying to write them, but the heroine has got to show a larger POV presence in these early pages.

Technical Topic -- Buffer Words

There's stuff we don't have to say.

In POV,
what is described in visual terms, the POV character saw.
Every sound mentioned ... the POV character heard.
All thought and opinion happened in the POV character's head.

We can, if we wish, leave out the 'buffer words' like, 'he saw', 'she noticed', 'he felt', 'he came to the conclusion that', 'he remembered', 'he decided', 'it was his opinion that'.

– The crocodile turned lazily in the bathtub.
instead of ,
He saw the crocodile turn lazily in the bathtub.

– Lightning hit the citadel,
instead of
He heard lightning hit the citadel.

– She combed the werewolf's long brown hair,
instead of,
She decided to comb the werewolf's long shaggy hair.

 – This eggplant is a major mistake,
instead of,
He just knew this eggplant was a major mistake.


– Nobody made seaweed biscuits like his mom,
instead of,
He'd always believed nobody made seaweed biscuits like his mom. 

– The alien landing in '87 was just this bad,
instead of,
He remembered the alien landing in '87 was just this bad.

– She opened the knife drawer.  She must carry a knife tonight.  A large sharp one.
instead of
She opened the knife drawer.  She decided she must carry a knife tonight.  A large sharp one.


By leaving out 'buffer words' we streamline the prose. We connect the reader directly to the experience of hearing, seeing, touching, smelling.  We put the reader so deeply in the POV the character that the character becomes, herself, invisible.  We refrain from reminding the reader of the vessel of perception.  The reader becomes that direct vessel, perceiving the fictional world without buffer or intermediary.

If it matters that someone heard or saw or reached out towards ... we can add this. And if we have not been helpfully informing the reader that, 'Hey, look, Inga is seeing this or hearing this'  ... the reader will now perk up and take notice when we say 'Inga heard ...' The act of hearing has just become significant.

Chapter One of Jess, about final

A young friend, 14, said one of those wise things that always surprise me. Don't know why it should surprise me that she's wise at 14, but it does.

I was complaining how hard it was to rewrite these first three chapters so they'd be in final form to submit.
She said, 'They tell us in dance – When it starts being a job ... quit.'

In other words, if it's not fun, don't do it.

I don't know why this helped, but it did.


So ... Today I finished another jiggle-this-and-that-word-around of Chapter One. It feels about done.
IF it is not too dense.
IF it is not overwritten.
IF I have not lost touch with the POV character's emotion.

I'll set it aside for a week. May I can come back and make an assessment. I'm either astronomically way off and should redo the entire first quarter of the story ... or I'm about ok. I will get an expert opinion on which it is when I submit.


And onward to Chapter Two. Once again, my goal is to eschew the glib and dig deep into the character. Free the man up from the matrix.


So weird. I dreamed about the character Sebastian last night. Never done that before.

Blue Bird

There was a bluebird looking in the bluebird box.

(Everybody hold your breath.)

JoB

Chapter One JESS

You'd think there would be only so many times you could rewrite Chapter One and stare at it and go stomping around the house and come back and save it as a doc and put it away and start all over again.

You'd think.

I've spent a week doing this.
I think I'm getting closer.

It's all a matter of slipping into VERY deep POV.


Here are some opening lines ...

This was England, so it was raining. Not clean, angry rain that might have done some good washing the street. What she had falling on her was a drizzle like a spoiled child, sullen and persistent and whiny.

or ...

It was London, so it was drizzling. Fog crawled up out of the Thames, smelling of ghosts and bad dreams.

or ...

Jess hated the dark. Worse than rats were likely to come for her if she was out after dark.

And the latest --

Once you get a taste for thievery, you never lose it. Papa mentioned that from time to time, with a little clout to the side of her head so she'd know he was referring to her.

Grumble, grumble, grumble ....

In other news, I took the dog out late last night. It was snowing fluffy wet flakes the size of kittens. We sat and looked at them for a while in the light from the front porch.

Mid April. Whole bunch of surprised plants in my front yard.