Well, I’m back to real life!
So what now? What happens when you come back from an amazing writing time and have to start doing laundry again?
I always take a breather between projects. My brain needs a reset; my body needs to decompress from the hyper creative mode it’s been charging around in. Usually there is also an office reset involved—refiling notes and books that have been in convenient stacks, adding information to my charts and graphs, etc. My project goes into a cocoon on my desktop to rest for a few months until I have enough distance to do an edit.
Editing can be just as much fun as writing that first draft. It gives an author a chance to rediscover their story with fresh eyes. I generally start an edit by rereading the story start to finish without making changes, but keeping notes when a scene needs more context (or setting details—always more setting details) or if a character needs tweaking.
If I have workshopped a story—as I have the one coming up—then I already have an idea of what needs to be done. In the case of my upcoming edit I have two major story rewrites and a character overhaul. The plot points are the same but the way they unfold needs to be less chatty—more action. Often a first draft is exposition heavy because an author is figuring out things as they go. I’ll be using some of my new mystery writing techniques to tighten up my plot points.
This week in my novel writing class I taught “the first scene”. I told the kids it is the hardest scene to write because it has so many jobs. Not only does it need to hook a reader, but also show if the world is different from the real one, provide context for the greater story, and introduce a character! We used the placeholder method in class to write several openings to their stories.
The placeholder method has an author write down the following:
1. Where in the book is the action taking place (before, during, or right after the climax?)
2. Who is involved and what do we see about their character/flaws/etc.
3. What/any world differences?
4. Plot points.
Using the list, craft a few options for opening scenes…or don’t. Sometimes I am well into a first draft before I go back and write the scene—the important thing is that I know what is going to be there and have something to build from.
That’s it for today folks! My brain is still feeling a bit swamped.
Happy Writing this week, or happy resting this week!
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