Chapter One
Jan. 23rd, 2010 06:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
anthimeriaSo, with me waiting to hear back from everybody about just about everything I'm writing, I wound up back at The Novel this week. It's been a month and a half since I looked at it, but that doesn't mean its problems haven't been percolating at the back of my brain--especially the big one, the killer, the thing that will doom this book before it ever gets off an assistant's desk: a bad beginning.
Having been an editor for years, I know that nothing makes me want to reject a story like not caring after a couple of paragraphs. Those were short stories, mind, but the fact remains: in publishing, you have about a page or two to catch an agent or an editor's eye (or more likely, as a newbie, their assistant's). So the biggest roiling fear in my gut (after still not having a title) was the opening section, which was, frankly, pretty bad. I've known it was bad since I started writing, oh, a year and a half ago (not all of which was spent on The Novel, mind--I was still in school). I'd rewritten and revised it so many times that I lost count. And still it didn't work.
This story, however, does have a happy ending. I'm a sucker for those.
After hitting it with bricks and blood and words and exposition and narration and description and all other manner of literary devices, I scrapped the whole thing and started with action. Because who doesn't like jumping in medias res?
Part of the reason I was thinking about it at all was that I'd just been working on the Skywatch outline (which took three completely separate drafts, but please god let it mean I don't have to write a new ending this time), and since Skywatch is aimed at slightly younger readers, I knew I'd have to hook them with line one--so, beginning in medias res. In Skywatch's case (right now) that means standing on the edge of the City with all the sky below her. For The Novel, what it means (again, right now) is my unicorn being hunted.
Definitely a better beginning than her sitting in a stream.
So I sent my new beginning to my editors, and hope they will like it better than the old one. I certainly feel more hopeful!
Having been an editor for years, I know that nothing makes me want to reject a story like not caring after a couple of paragraphs. Those were short stories, mind, but the fact remains: in publishing, you have about a page or two to catch an agent or an editor's eye (or more likely, as a newbie, their assistant's). So the biggest roiling fear in my gut (after still not having a title) was the opening section, which was, frankly, pretty bad. I've known it was bad since I started writing, oh, a year and a half ago (not all of which was spent on The Novel, mind--I was still in school). I'd rewritten and revised it so many times that I lost count. And still it didn't work.
This story, however, does have a happy ending. I'm a sucker for those.
After hitting it with bricks and blood and words and exposition and narration and description and all other manner of literary devices, I scrapped the whole thing and started with action. Because who doesn't like jumping in medias res?
Part of the reason I was thinking about it at all was that I'd just been working on the Skywatch outline (which took three completely separate drafts, but please god let it mean I don't have to write a new ending this time), and since Skywatch is aimed at slightly younger readers, I knew I'd have to hook them with line one--so, beginning in medias res. In Skywatch's case (right now) that means standing on the edge of the City with all the sky below her. For The Novel, what it means (again, right now) is my unicorn being hunted.
Definitely a better beginning than her sitting in a stream.
So I sent my new beginning to my editors, and hope they will like it better than the old one. I certainly feel more hopeful!