I've been rewriting the same opening scene for the last week. I think I finally have it. I think. Openings are hard for me. I'm on about my 4th stab at this one.
I don't want to think about how many times I had to rewrite the opening scene of the current project...openings aren't usually that hard for me (other things are) but this one kept coming out with all the character and appeal of two-day-old vanilla tapioca pudding...no, not even that. Two-day-old cold porridge. With dishwater on top.
Mine either detracted from the main protag/storyline or just plain moved too slowly. As you said in St Louis, the thrillers you read while there started *bam*, right in the middle of things.
Those conversations we had really helped me--I don't think I had the chance to tell you that. I wish I could have been as much help to you.
You were, just in a different way. Ruta was the sounding board I needed (poor Ruta!!) and so was my friend Karen when I got to Oswego. You were the person I could play expert to--while realizing as I listened to you and read those other things, that I had fallen into a similar pattern.
Those thrillers and the magazine articles, basic as they were, gave me a much-needed smack upside the brainstem...my opening was every big as blah...and though mine's not a thriller, it's also not supposed to be quite as put-down-able as it was. I think now it's not...there's conflict right up front, even if not all the conflict right up front.)
Given your Jani books, I don't know how you can write a first scene until the book is mostly done. How else can you get all the roots of your avalanches into the first chapter?
There is something to that. This situation is almost as bad. I know the ending--I usually know the endings. I know how the pov character in this first scene ends up.
It's a question of pacing. When I think I'm going way too fast, it's apparently the right pace for a mystery of the thriller variety. I couldn't go that all out with the Jani books because I had to frontload backstory as well as move the present plot. That really started to suck around book #4.
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Those conversations we had really helped me--I don't think I had the chance to tell you that. I wish I could have been as much help to you.
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Those thrillers and the magazine articles, basic as they were, gave me a much-needed smack upside the brainstem...my opening was every big as blah...and though mine's not a thriller, it's also not supposed to be quite as put-down-able as it was. I think now it's not...there's conflict right up front, even if not all the conflict right up front.)
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(Anonymous) 2009-11-05 01:52 am (UTC)(link)Adrianne
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It's a question of pacing. When I think I'm going way too fast, it's apparently the right pace for a mystery of the thriller variety. I couldn't go that all out with the Jani books because I had to frontload backstory as well as move the present plot. That really started to suck around book #4.