Chapter One AGAIN

Last night, I finished my first week of school and a hectic work week. After a week of lectures, it becomes hopeful that my psych class will be easier than I thought and maybe I do have time for everything.

Last night I didn't go to bed early. Instead of collapsing when my daughter went to bed, I rewrote chapter one of my second manuscript, Courting Apparitions. Except it wasn't a rewrite as much as stripping stuff out.

At the end of the first novel, two characters ended up bound together in an unusual circumstance and I thought this would impede the conditions for the start of the second book.

In the previous draft, the protagonist runs into the antagonist and his emotional state upon seeing the antagonist causes an event that sets the book in motion.

I thought that would be a problem if the antagonist had a partner and through that partner learned more about himself that would theoretically keep the event from happening.

But then I realized the simple answer, what if the antagonist went looking for the protagonist because he needed to revisit what happened in the previous book and this would upset the protagonist and spur the event that sets the book in motion.

The simple solution in writing is best 99% of the time.

New first line:
"No man ever deserved anything more than Étienne d'Amille deserved this beer right now."

Who's rules are you writing by?

I finished (so I hope) two brochures for work today. Several of us had a disagreement regarding whether on-the-hour times should read:

• 8 a.m.
• 8:00 a.m.
• 8:00 A.M.

Now, the first on the list is Associated Press/newspaper style.

Which got me explaining the important of knowing what "style" we wish to convey as an organization and sticking to that style. We also discussed:

• Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., celebration
• Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. celebration
• Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. celebration

I felt the insertion of one comma mimicked addressing a person or an envelop, which we're not doing here. I felt no comma was best and two commas felt like creating "Jr." as an appositive phrase that could be removed...

So, who's rules were we trying to follow? Associated Press? Chicago? Etiquette? Our own?

And from there, I pondered who's rules I tried to follow when I write. We must write for ourselves, I've covered that before. But we all impose rules on what we do. First person or third. Third limited or omniscient. Can prepositions end a sentence? Show don't tell.

(Yet, many big commercial authors have no grammar skills and don't follow any rules.)

We want to write by rules of agents and editors. We worry what rules of theme and plot we can break without distancing readers. How much sex is okay?

Last night, my critique group read my new chapter one of Courting Apparitions. They thought it worked, but it raised the following questions:

• Do the frankness of the discussions between the two men, followed by the kissing/greetings rituals of the French make the main character seem bisexual?
• Would a typical American reader lose all sympathy for the main character if it is revealed that he was tricked into sleeping with a 15-year-old girl?
  

The answers were interesting, and made me realize how taboos/rules/expectations of society factor into the rules of writing...

Swirling brain

My brain swirls, or perhaps ripples like the water on a still pond. As each thought breaks the surface, it extends outward...

I have wanted to write for days, but fatigue and holiday obligations have prevented this. And now, with the opportunity finally presenting itself... I can't focus. I couldn't even settle on a topic for my blog, so I'm going stream of consciousness. Lucky you.

I seem to dwell on what could be termed the epilogue of book three of my series... And wanting to research Post Traumatic Stress Disorder... doesn't that make you wonder what I'm planning for my poor characters, or at least for one of them. Several die, one becomes a victim, and an unlikely hero emerges.

Part of me wants to spend some time with the bad guy from books one and two, because I'm sensing the shallowness in him. Other people have told me they didn't get into him enough, and I see him as distant from the world. But I fear this contemplation, because "fixing" him and allowing myself to see more of the greater world from his perspective will, no doubt, change the first book as well. And this is the one I am marketing.

Well, or I was. I fell down on the job lately. I have no queries out right now.

I was really getting into the revisions for book two, and had finished more or less the first third when I determined it still wasn't working. So I tried a new chapter one, as I mentioned a few weeks ago. I think I might be on the right track with this one. So...

I suppose what I have to do is reread my revised chapter one and evaluate it and see how far I got with the latest chapter two.

Uggh.

Reflections Upon Critique

When a writer brings a piece to a critique group, I feel it's necessary not to defend the piece.

It does not matter what you intended. It either works or it doesn't.

My critique group did not "get" what I intended from the chapter last night. I could consider them all stupid and move on, but when the general consensus consistently missed the point on why the details were there... Then the problem is obviously not them.

It does not mean my idea is bad. It just means my implementation failed.

Speaking of implementation that failed, they spent some time telling me the story/ central conflict as they understood it. Another chapter that had failed miserably was chapter one. (There's a blog entry for another day: The agony of finding a chapter one that is both captivating and effective in regards to plot.) What I found interesting of this discussion was how "close" their interpretation was to what I desired, but that they were right-- I had bogged the story down in some areas with important details that were misplaced. And I also realized that the reason my original chapter one failed is because I let the mystery continue for too long. Upon further reflection, I never resolved it at all. Bad author.

So I lay in bed last night pondering this. I wanted desperately to get out of bed and write. But it was after midnight and as a mom, I can't indulge whims like that. (I don't do well on lack of sleep.) But I developed a new concept that might work and give me the plot structure to construct AND resolve the mystery.

This is a lot of rambling. And today I have important but mundane things to do: bathe child, work for the office, study for my economics quiz, but this new concept obsesses me. I can't indulge my writing frenzy, but perhaps I can reward myself throughout the day...

My concepts for chapter one of this "sequel" book have been many. I wrote one from the bad guy's point of view, and that revealed too much too fast and didn't quite make sense. I wrote one from the good guy's point of view that was too long and poorly paced to suck you in.

My chapter one submitted to the critique group was so fast-paced and action driven that it became difficult to process, and the melodramatic nature of it lead my readers to believe my protagonist was on drugs or a complete nutcase and later chapters did nothing to explain what happened. Which made the manuscript disjointed.

So, my new concept, of which I have about 500 words is slower. The point of the chapter is to set the emotional duress of the protagonist, a character who, in the first book, was vibrant and full of life, and has now experienced a myriad of physical problems, depression, and grief that has changed his joie de vivre. And since it's a paranormal book, when the weird stuff happens in chapter one, he thinks he has imagined it all because of those things and in the next chapter, everyone around him starts experiencing it, too...

In the new chapter one, in my current attempt, Étienne begins the book in the exact physical location where the bad guy begins the first book, in a similar physical posture, doing something similar. I did not plan it or engineer it this way on purpose. But the setting is identical... and that could end up being a strength if I do it right/well...