Mostly, I have some bad writing to cover everything that's happening. There are a few important scenes in the last quarter of the manuscript that exist only as
"Maggie and Doyle stagger upstairs and make love'
or
'All the good guys sit at the kitchen table and plot'
or
'Everybody goes into one room. They duke it out and the bad guy loses.'
After agonizing back and forth, I've decided to change a perfectly good opening for what may be a better one. I've lifted out Chapters One to Five, 12K words, and saved them in my discard file.
Now I'll redo the beginning. We're still in Rough Draft One mode.
So ... I'm back to:
Progress of a sort, I suppose.
I do that too.
ReplyDeleteMy last MS in my first draft I had the major showdown between the good guys vs the bad guys as:
"FIGHT SCENE! FIGHT SCENE! FIGHT SCENE!"
Needless to say, I elaborated a bit for the final draft.
My current WIP has:
"Tour of the house. Description wifely duties. CHILDREN!!! Dum dum dum!"
as a placeholder in Chapter 9.
I might leave it there, though. Is very concise, non? :D
Take your time. I love your work. Beginnings are difficult. We (writers) need them to start and move on, but usually we change them.
ReplyDeleteHi Moth --
ReplyDeleteThis strikes me about manuscript drafts. Some parts are polished and let's-think'about-particular-adjectives-here-ish and some parts are FIGHT-SCENE!-ish.
All at the same time.
It's like setting out to sea while you're still building the ship.
Hi M. Ophelia --
ReplyDeleteI find beginnings just agonizing. Middles and endings aren't all that easy either, now that I think of it.
I've decided that Maggie's 'theme' for this story is going to be French folk stories -- the ones that would be contemporary to her. Such a contrast between the French approach tgo legends and folk tales and the German approach.
I'm only beginning to research this. It's fascinating.