Had a couple of fiction-writing sessions with Mary Anne today. (In the sense that we were sitting in a cafe together and both working on our respective writing projects.) In the first session, I was chagrined at the end of two hours to realize I had written a total of zero new words—but I did finally make some difficult decisions about one major character whose background had been annoyingly vague up until now, and I made a few tweaks here and there, and decided on middle and\/or last names for a couple of characters (more important than it sounds, because in these cases it tied into race and ancestry issues I'd been trying to resolve), and worked out some family history.<\/p>\n
(Mary Anne recently suggested a great exercise for working out novel-character backstory: write a short story about the character's past. I ended up not doing that in this case, though I still might (and might conceivably incorporate such a thing into the novel as flashbacks), but just thinking about it in those terms made it much easier to finally choose between multiple options.)<\/p>\n
Then in the afternoon writing session, I finally sat down to tackle the opening, which I wrote a terrible draft of about a year and a half ago. I had been avoiding coming back and looking at it—I knew it needed a heavy rewrite, and I didn't want to get bogged down in that before I had most of the rest of the first draft of the book done—but today I focused on it. I spent a while wondering whether it was best to cut right to the magic as soon as possible, or whether I should start with a long slow opening introducing the characters and letting them hang out together, because apparently novel readers don't mind that sort of thing if it's done well.<\/p>\n
But then I remembered the screenwriting advice to start each scene as late as possible, and I thought, Huh, I could start with them already in the attic<\/i>, so I decided to give it a try; figured I could discard it and try something else if that didn't work.<\/p>\n
But I think it worked remarkably well. I wrote a brand-new 500-word opening scene that I think lays all the groundwork I need, fairly economically, and then I threw out the two opening scenes I had had before, which were long and dull and full of clunky prose. (I had made a note to myself to “get rid of all the damn adjectives!”)<\/p>\n
So I think the opening now works. Yay!<\/p>\n
Now all I have to do is write maybe half a dozen more scenes in the last third of the book, and I'll be done with the first draft.<\/p>\n
Then, of course, I have to do a major revision, dealing with political issues, strengthening character arcs, and deciding whether to cut it down to be a novella or expand it to be a novel.<\/p>\n
About that last: in this entry I keep saying “book” and “novel,” because I'm kind of resigned to it turning into that. But I still predict that the first draft is going to be just about exactly 40,000 words. Which is a terrible length. Still not sure what to do about that. But I think expanding it some will make more sense than trying to cut it.<\/p>\n
But before I do either of those things, gotta finish the first draft.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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