Thursday, August 22, 2013

Technical Topic -- Why the First Scene Should Be a Ghost


This topic is dedicated to all those people who keep working and working and changing stuff and
rewriting but never quite get past the first chapter or so.  They know the story they want to write. 
But they're stuck.

My advice.
Ahem.
Please. Just please.
Stop rewriting that first chapter.

Look,
the First Scene is plain bloody hard to write.


You have to juggle six or eight difficult initiating requirements to set up the story while also making sure the reader doesn't just shrug and put your book back on the shelf.

And these first couple scenes are hard because you know about nothing of what your characters are like and how they act and talk.  You don't even have all your plot laid out unless you're one of those annoying folks who do.  Yet here you have to write the First Scene as if you were familiar with all that stuff.

The first draft is a hit-the-ground-running-in-the-dark sorta thing, and the first thing you run into are the gorse bushes of the opening scene.

Ask me how I know this.


Anyhow
there is an intrinsic mismatch between having to open with fully developed characters, story knowledge, voice, and tone -- and the sad fact of not having these when you open your document and write  Scene One,  Chapter One, for the first time.

This a mismatch you maybe can solve by writing the First Chapter . . . last.
Or at least, later

Here you are in media res, as it were, struggling with Chapter Three and not really able to write it because you can't let go of an incomplete and imperfect Scene One.
You have to make the opening perfect.  You have to.  But, by the very nature of writing, you can't.

So maybe try this:
Go into your document and recolor the text of the First Chapter pale gray.
Like this.

That will remind you that the First Chapter is now a ghost.
It is insubstantial. It doesn't count.
Ignore it and move on. 
The First Chapter is allowed to be ugly and full of errors because it is a ghost and doesn't count.


You will return triumphantly to that First Chapter after you've written 50,000 words in the WIP, at which point you will wake up one morning and know what to do with Chapter One which will be a whole 'nother way than how you are handling it now.

Okay.  This won't help you if you're seriously paralyzed by doubt and perfectionism,
(in that case you go read Bird By Bird,)
but it may help if you just keep stumbling over your feet at the starting block.

32 comments:

  1. Wise words, Jo. I've started writing my next book and my opening chapters are positively skeletal compared to the bloated first chapters - ones I agonised over for eternity as I re-wrote them to death - of my first book.
    "Near enough is good enough," is my motto for first draft writing this time round!

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    1. There's something enticing about fiddling with those first chapters. Maybe it's hard to let go of the edge of the pool and swim out in the deep end ...

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  2. You know how I get around this? By not writing the first chapter until it feels right in my mind, LOL. It might not be an effective method of starting an MS, but it works so far. :)

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    1. Whatever works.

      I endlessly dither. I'll admit it. I think that's part of my process or something.

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  3. What a great post, Jo! And how true it is. My scene one has had 100 rewrites and maybe, finally, it's about ready. ;-)

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    1. Maybe the hardest scene in he book, that kickoff scene.
      I have trouble with love scenes too.

      If I ever write a love scene as the first scene in the book, I think the universe will implode or something.

      Delete
  4. Great post! And Bird by Bird is an excellent read even if one isn't paralyzed by doubt and perfectionism.

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    1. I look upon Bird by Bird as a great book to solve a problem I don't happen to have.
      A good read, anyhow.

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  5. I used to find something similar when writing documents at work. I would go back and write the Introduction after I had written the rest of the document, including the Conclusion. By that point you know what you want to say at the beginning! So, dive into the middle is the way forward...

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    1. That is so cool and interesting. I spent years writing non-fiction and I love it.

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  6. Wise words. It's so much better to just jump in, get to know the story, then worry about the beginning. I Rarely write the beginning first. Of course, I'm still struggling to figure out how to write a good beginning.

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    1. My problem is I write the beginning. Then I write it again. Then again ...

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  7. Wonderful advice! As always!

    Thanks so much, Jo!

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    1. Oh, thank you so much. I am the original Yenta.

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  8. Thank you Jo! I have been agonizing over that stupid first chapter, and I don't want it to be stupid. I'd left it alone for a long time. When I went back to write it, I was surprised to see that my character was showing up on the page a totally different person from when I'd began the story. I was pulling my hair out. Now, I think I see why. It makes perfect sense that I would know her better now than when she first emerged.
    Thank you, thank you, from a slightly less confused, Nan

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  9. Hi Nan --

    This is so true. We start out with one character and 30,000 words later, he's grown into somebody else entirely. Trying to fit him into the old first chapter is like trying to fit your sixth grader into his kindergarten shoes.

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  10. This is the advice I keep trying to give linear writers I know, who simply won't move on until they're satisfied with page one, let alone chapter one. I'm trying to instill in them the 'gangplank' idea - and the excitement that comes with forging ahead with the story and characters!

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    1. 'Gangplank' is a good word for it.

      When we're tense about the writing; when there seems to be only one way to do it -- a lot of times this comes from deep uncertainty. Sometimes it helps to take the whole writing thing a little less seriously.

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  11. I think it was Beth's term, if I remember correctly...

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    1. Initiator of many good things, Beth is. *s*

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    2. Deniz and Jo,

      Y'all are too kind, but I only borrowed the term from Rafe Steinberg, who had it from his Harvard professor back in 1947: poet John Ciardi. I blogged about it in June of 07 (yes, I looked it up) but I don't know how to create a link here.

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  13. Great post, Jo. I like fiddling with my first chapters, like making a good first layer of a cake. Of course, as I get deeper into the story, say at the 40-50K place, I do go back and make further adjustments. In my second novel, Against the Wind, I didn't decide till midway through the heroine should be an artist. So I had to go back and have her see the villain as an artist would. The first chapters basically remained the same but her POV was slightly altered. Make sense?

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    1. It makes excellent sense. That POV fiddling is something we all do. Change maybe ten words here and add ten there and you got a 30% better characterization.

      It's a kind of magic.

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  14. I so relate t this. I was done, done I tell you with it and all of a sudden, lying in bed it hit me that this was the chapter, so at 5:30 am on vacation, I got up and wrote it in. And there it has sat..for the most part...

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    1. Yo are so lucky. Those scenes that come to eat out of our hand when we're not chasing them are the best ones.

      Sometimes the boyz in the basement dome through big time.

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  15. Wow! Write in grey! I never thought of that, but what a cool idea. I've learned not to labour over chapter one because more likely than not it'll end up as chapter fifteen or four or something as I reshape the book. I just keep writing scenes as I see them, then put them together again like a puzzle.

    Thanks for the great perspective, Jo!

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    1. I think life must be incredibly difficult for those linear thinkers who can't -- how would one put it? -- can't throw the spaghetti of the scenes against the wall to see what fits.

      I don't know that I've ever pried up the first chapter and set it down somewhere else. First chapters tend to be so specialized. But I sure as heck have moved chapters nine through eleven further back in the story to become seventeen and company.

      Diana Gabaldon is another of those -- "Write the scenes that come to you and they'll fit in someplace." There are some other great writers who do this.

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  16. I think the first three chapters are the hardest. I've learned to just get through the first draft, then go back and start adding in. Only then do I go back and rewrite the first chapters, and they still end up getting changed after my beta readers are done with them. Shared.

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    1. Yes! If one can just get through the first draft. It makes so much difference to have the whole plot laid out before you.

      (That's when you see all the plotholes ...)

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  17. Cannot tell you the number of books I've written that started three chapters too early. Not three pages, not three scenes, three CHAPTERS. The only way to figure that out... Oh, the pain of it all. This is where website bonus material got its start.

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    1. That is a motto if I ever heard one.

      "You aren't cutting the first three chapters. You're creating Bonus Material."

      If I could just gather together all the words I've wasted writing those first three chapters and turn it into a coherent book ...

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