August 12, 2019
What is the most difficult part of your artistic process?
When I first read this question, my thought was “But it’s all hard!” However, that wouldn’t make a very good blog post, so here we are.
After giving it some thought, the answer was simple. Beginnings. It’s hard to find the right place to start, whether it’s a book or a blog post. Often it takes me three or four tries to write the beginning of anything. (It took me three tries to get this far!)
Unlike the advice in song from The Sound of Music, Do_Re_Mi, stories don’t always start from the beginning. They need to start at some point that will draw the reader in. How bad would it be to have every book start with the birth of the main character?
Sometimes, it’s finding the right ‘voice’ to tell the story. When I wrote the prequel to the Harmony Duprie mysteries, I wanted to write in from Jake’s point of view. I tried four different beginnings, but none of them worked. Jake just didn’t want to reveal his secrets. Once I switched to Harmony’s point of view, the story came easily.
When I wrote The Marquesa’s Necklace, the first book in the series, I wrote an entire chapter that ended up being deleted. But it wasn’t a lost effort, because it helped me to develop Harmony’s personality. Plus, I used parts of it in my reworked first chapter.
In fact, I pulled out the first paragraph from the first draft. You’ll see why I got rid of it!
It was another quiet day in the library—just the way I like it. As an ex-librarian, I appreciate the times when only a few patrons are scattered in the stacks or perusing the racks of periodicals. Back then it gave me time to shelve books or straighten out the magazines. Now that I spend much of my time doing research for a writers’ co-op, these times are when I am most productive. None of my old coworkers object when I accumulate a large pile of books on the table I stake out as my territory for the day. They know I will put them back in the proper place before I leave. I don’t necessarily need all these books, but they create a wall I can hide behind.
The same is true for my Free Wolves series. Although the prequel to Wolves’ Pawn came to me a dream, writing the first chapter wasn’t easy. And I wrote it with pen and paper, so while I have the original somewhere, you aren’t going to get the original opening paragraph!
Each book I write, it gets a little easier to write a good first chapter. That doesn’t mean they don’t go through numerous revisions, only that I don’t end up having to delete the whole thing and start over.
By the way, endings can be hard, too. But I’m just going to leave this here and head over to check out what the other authors have to say. You can come with me by following the links below.
August 12, 2019
What is the most difficult part of your artistic process?
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Beginnings are so exciting, I never know if I’m starting a short story or a series!
My worry is knowing I want to write a book and being afraid it will turn into a short story!
I’ve picked up a short story from three years ago, after I had a sudden urge to turn it into a book.
I don’t find beginnings hard. It’s just finding the right place to begin telling about the beginning.
But endings are a struggle — which might explain why I write series.
Sometimes I know what the end is before I find the beginning…and sometimes I don’t know what the end is until the last chapter!
Yeah, that’s true too. The book that will publish this year, I knew the end of it before I finished the previous book.
Beginnings are easy for me, because I can almost always guarantee one of my characters is going to get themselves into trouble. The problem is the middle portion of the story, because my characters get themselves into trouble, and then go off and do unexpected things like quitting their jobs, and throwing the rest of my plot ideas out of the window in the process.
I know the feeling. Sometimes you just have to sit back and let the characters tell the story the way it happened, not the way you thought it was going to happen.
I tend to agree with you, its all hard but invigorating and challenging too. I suppose we all have our hardest thing.
These days we’re told to write the kind of beginning to get readers hooked straight away. I agree – that’s hard!
I have almost put down books that had a slow beginning. If you can’t grab my attention in the first chapter, it’s a bad sign. But I have this thing about finishing every book I read…it has to be really bad for me to abandon it.
I’ve abandoned many books, but it’s not usually a slow beginning that would make me give up. I prefer a slow beginning to get into the story.
Hmm…maybe that’s a topic for another day…What will make you give up and stop reading a book?
Poor spelling and grammar, conversation in local dialect, and excessive swearing and sex.