Showing My Age
My writing age, that is.
I feel like I landed the voice in my new middle-grade proposal. It's first-person, and Alvaro spends chapter one essentially riffing on life. He introduces his twin sister, his grandma, and the three Hulks (part of the story). He tells readers about his dad and his mom. And about there being something very strange about his upbringing. I really slipped into this voice easily and found my groove. And it's definitely (I think) easy reading--with some suspense. The kind of opening that would make a reader want to know more.
Except I'm essentially tossing it. Which means I am showing my age.
You see, when I first started writing, there was something about that first chapter that I became attached to. Very rarely would I change a word, because the first chapter usually represented the culmination of a lot of thought, and I had "pre-written" much of it in my head.
Now, I am more apt to step back and think precisely what I did about my middle-grade idea. That yes, there is something there and the chapter outlines essential elements. But it needs to open with a BANG.
Writers mature. In four of the last five books I worked on as an editor, I saw good writing. I saw that the writer put the character out there, set up enough of the back story. But in the end, I saw the opening chapters too much as set-up. As if the writer need to just get it down on paper for himself or herself, to set the world up. And that's fine. As long as that's not what's reaching the reader in the end.
With time and a whole lot of writing under my belt, I now see that my chapter, funny and tightly written as it is, was really just for ME. It was for me to find his voice and feel around for who he is and what his world is (there are supernatural elements at work). But now I need to feel around for the STORY and bring it front and center.
Thoughts? How do you establish your opening chapter? What do you think it has to contain? And how are your opening chapters now different from what you wrote when you first started fiction?
5 comments:
I think that's true, in general, for me as well. I don't pitch the first chapter that much (sometimes) because I've given it a lot of thought prior to sitting down to write. And for me the first chapter is a lot like a catapult that needs to propel the novel the rest of the distances. Often, THAT'S what I'm looking for. I wonder--now that you've got me thinking this morning--if that's partly why some of my ideas die. The story idea is there, but there isn't enough energy in the initial chapter to keep the story going. It needs something else.
Mark:
It was interesting. Once I had the whole thing written (the whole chapter), I slept on it a bit, and thought . . . no, I think it has to open somewhere else, something more immediately WOW. We'll see. I know my editor for Magickeepers I said he actually LIKES a chapter to show "the world before" and then that way you see how the ordinary is disrupted.
I really can't write the first chapter until it's all there. I have thrown stuff away... threw the first 10,000 of my WIP away, but I basically revised it and only made minor changes. (Sometimes it's easier for me to start over than untangle a knot.)
I'm obsessive about my first chapters. They've got to have the roots of the whole story, lots of hooks I can pick up on later, and all the guns that will go off must be on the mantle. Not to mention the end has to be in the beginning so that the end will have a nice, neat tidy ending.
Natasha:
Yes! It all has to be there!!
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