I’m seven pages into the rework of my chapter 15. So far it’s kept most of the character and plot points it started with though the characters have been significantly revised since the last go around, and the events leading up to it have also changed a lot. The problem I’m having thought is that I’m not satisfied with the words hitting the page. I’ll write a bit of scene and look back over it, just to make sure I got the entire thought. Entirely too often, I don’t like what I’m seeing. Part of it is my own overly critical eye, the other part is that I’m not sure HOW to make it better than it is -perhaps I’ll need a friend with a red pen. I would say that what I’m writing flows reasonably well and has adequate description and action, but it’s not as good as I want it to be. I’m forcing myself to just let it go and continue on. All of the highlights are in there. I think right now the best thing to do is to work through the revision, go back through one more time, and continue on through the story. I’ll just have to let it sit and simmer before I can go back and think about the polishing process. Anyhow, that’s today’s thought.
Tag Archives: fiction writing
Chapter transitions and Jameson 18
I’m working on a transition between my unexpected chapter 14, and chapter 15. Chapter 15 is a lovely bit of the story because I’ve had it drafted since my story was little more than a sketch so it’s pretty well polished. The problem I’ve got though, and have had since the chapter was originally written, is that I’m still struggling to develop a good transition from the previous chapter. Trying to work this out brings me back to well worn ground. How do you open a chapter? Chapter 1 feels like a special case, for starters, you haven’t got to connect it to a previous chapter, and also you don’t have to worry about starting it in exactly the same way as the previous chapter –because there isn’t one. My horrible, awful and cringe-worthy habit is to start them out with the main character waking up. I hate it and yet inevitably this is where I’m drawn. Just being aware of this unfortunate habit gives me the opportunity to address it, and believe me I am. I really don’t have a good solution for this except to say that it’s probably not a good idea to always start your chapters with the same kind of action, unless there is some very specific reason to.
Fortunately, my problem with chapter 15 isn’t that the main character is waking up at the start of it for the 10th chapter in a row. Instead, the issue at hand is specific to pacing. In chapter 14. The action concludes and the main characters are orienting themselves for the next leg of their journey. In chapter 15, they reach their goal and the action resumes. In between the end of chapter 14 and their goal in 15 are two days of travel. I don’t particularly want to spend a lot of time describing their journey down the road or insert some sort of additional conflict as they go. I could add a bit of conflict here before they reach their goal, but it feels like adding unnecessary events that I’ll just need to cut anyhow. For now, I think I’m going to start with a description of the landscape as it has changed over their two days, and use something like a flash-back to describe those two days of travel. The summary will probably cover no more than a few paragraphs, but to work, I think it’s going to need to be longer than a few sentences. Then, I’ll just continue plugging away at trying to have all of book one into a full draft. After that, I’ll go back and start revising, one problem at a time. Looking at chapter transitions is going to be one of those things, I think.
As I’m writing this, I’m working on a little glass of Jameson 18 year (neat, if you must know). My brother-in-law gave it to my wife and I for Christmas. It’s frikin’ excellent. Smooth with hints of pear and cinnamon. It’s really excellent stuff and I highly recommend it.
A daily fight
Just a single thought tonight. It seems like every day, I trip over something else about writing a novel I hadn’t considered, or somehow sheds light on a problem in a way I couldn’t exactly see before. Sometimes this is nothing but helpful, and I have one of those aha moments where it makes sense and I’m ready to get my hands dirty. Other times however, the new insight feels like a punch to the gut. It has brought to light a problem so big, it requires structural changes to the story or a tremendous amount of thought I hadn’t expected.
I suppose as my head spins from one such revelation, today’s take away has been that writing a novel is not a matter of just stringing together events, people, and description. Sure, these are all part of it, but it’s not the sort of thing that can just be dashed out with the expectation of having something anyone would invest the time to read. I could go on about this, but not tonight. I’m tired. Perhaps more later.
On Writing Dragons 