Beginning
I just started a new Presents this past week. My editor gave the proposal the thumbs up about a week ago and since then I’ve been settling into…The Beginning.
Beginnings are hard for me. It take me a few chapters to get a handle on my characters and their voices. To start to understand how they dress and talk and move…and why.
I find beginnings a challenge because I always feel I’m walking a fine line between imparting all the information the reader needs in order to understand the set up of the plot…and letting the plot whip the characters around like their a steak in a dog’s jaws.
Beginnings are the slowest part of the book for me. At least, they are now. I find I make the most mistakes there, so now, I tend to ponder them longer. I’ve also made some of my mistakes so many times that I can FEEL them, waiting there, hidden in the words, ready to pounce on me.
I’m just into chapter four on my WIP and I know…I KNOW…that I’ve made some pacing errors. I’m working so hard to explain the plot. What the hero just found out, why the heroine lied, and what they’re going to do about it, that I find myself rushing. So I can get it ALL out and just get into the stuff I like. The angst and sexual tension and the emotion and the angsty childhood secrets.
But if I don’t build a solid foundation the whole book will collapse. This I know. This I have experienced. This I have seen in revision letters.
So, beginning can be hard. But it’s exciting too. New characters, new stories, are always exciting.
I just did a heroine who was quite in your face. Very corporate and sharp. So I’m having fun with a creative, sort of airy heroine who likes glitter and has a pink stripe in her hair. And a VERY buttoned up hero with some OCD tendencies that I have dubbed Mr. Personality.
So what do you find hardest…beginnings, middles or ends?
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Middles definitely! I can “pants” the first few chapters and lots of times I can nail down the black moment and write towards the end. Most times, I have this done before tackling the middle. I started doing this b/c if I wrote straight through I ran out of steam and my black moments were more like “blah” moments. But now I feel like middles is this big canyon I’ve got to throw a tiny rope over.
I’m studying a lot of my favorite Harlequin authors ;-), going back and reading just the middles of their books and figuring out how they make it work. It’s slowly starting to get better. Very slowly.
How timely! I’m going through this right now! Really, I’m having trouble committing to the first three chapters and am hesitant to send off the partial to my agent…Your posts are always insightful, thanks for sharing 🙂
Bah beginnings. And bah again!
I certainly pat you on the back on how you can keep on writing/thinking up such fine romances…never boring…always exciting!
I find the middle the hardest. That’s when the conflict starts to fizzle out and I’m making them to nice to each other. Any pointers on sagging middles!
I’ll address my beginnings haters first, since there’s a middles theme to address. 😉 Victoria, NO not the only one. :/ Ultimately though, we can over think and over tweak. At some point you have to call it good and trust yourself.
Jackie, bah indeed, my friend!
Diane (thank you!) and Jill, middles ARE really tricky and I think they definitely used to be my ‘dead zone’ productivity wise. For me, I try to think of what my characters NEED to grow together. Because we’re headed to a happily ever after that the reader needs to believe, so it’s the chance to really show WHY they should be together.
It’s also the point in the book where the internal conflict can really start to show itself, where the characters start to have a harder time hiding those things about themselves that their so desperate to hide. Not EVERYTHING has to wait until the end. (In fact, I’ve found that if I try to save TOO much for the end I end up with a rushed, crammed, under-explained ending, but that’s just me!)
Also, for tackling middles, I started forcing myself to be disciplined and write a higher word count each day so I could blast through it faster, and go back and fix it if I had to. Because otherwise I could spend a long while floundering in the same place.
Hope that helps!
I LOVE beginnings! *scurries off* *shouts from a distance* It’s chapters 6, 7 and 8 (or the “now what?” chapters as I call them) that are killers for me.
Scurry away, little Maya! Scurry!