Making it work

[N J Sturgess]

Hi guys,

I'm totally rewriting my first novel (it's 3000 times better) although I lost an exciting first chapter that I couldn't relate to my MCs and it was throwaway characters.

What sort of things would you look in order to try and make it exciting? Not looking for ideas, just perhaps a different way of thinking.

Thanks

Nick

 

[KateESal]

Hi Nick

I find a bit of subconscious "foldback" to be very useful when revising and rewriting.

Allow me to explain...

I like to take under-exploited details, sometimes things I had included purely for background colour in the first draft, and then weave them more firmly into the narrative. Basically, I turn descriptive quirks or minor events into stronger strands of story and finish up with a far richer and more satisfying story as a result.

There's something you could try

 

[N J Sturgess]

Thanks Kate. I've done some editing already (I tend to put in too much detail to start with and not let people use their imagination...) but I'll definitely come back to that idea.

 

[Robert M Derry]

I'd suggest doing something a bit boring to make it more exciting - go back and look at your novel plan. If you haven't done one - do one, particularly for plotting.

I found it immensely helpful to plot out my last novel and summarise all the chapters and how they interlink. The plot should be a series of events that are linked by cause and effect, each new event requiring the last to occur.

This will help you understand why your novel may not be exciting enough and how to make it more exciting.

 

[CageSage]

If we could answer that question of our own writing, we'd be top of the writing world.
However, now back on Earth, if you can make a history for your character/s that includes the two or three biggest emotional events that shaped their internal, core beliefs (before the story started) and then use that to create a moment in the opening scene where it (a ruffling in the sense of normal) pings the character's internal markers.
Does that make sense? Sorry, just out of bed. Too early in the blessed AM.
Anyway, after that sense of disturbance, the rest of the journey for that character (or however many you have as main chars) is issues and events that test their beliefs to breaking point.
And as this indicates:

under-exploited details

after the first draft is complete, look for the things that could be used to represent that inner core. I'm not talking about talking-sword type things, but something particular to this character, something that is representative of their inner journey (my last story used a Brolga motif, but limited to three times). I wish you luck because I know it takes me three times (or ten times) longer to edit/review/revise/rewrite the story once it's reached 'the end' the first time.

 

[N J Sturgess]

Hi Robert,

It's all planned out. It just has a slow start to it as the characters are introduced and the plot starts to unfold. Both protagonist and antagonist are on the first page so it does start. It just seems a boring scene.

Might be being unfair on myself?

 

[Robert M Derry]

Hi Robert,

It's all planned out. It just has a slow start to it as the characters are introduced and the plot starts to unfold. Both protagonist and antagonist are on the first page so it does start. It just seems a boring scene.

Might be being unfair on myself?

Sadly, you're probably not being unfair on yourself. If you feel that it has a slow start everyone else will probably feel the same.

Often, the key to generating excitement is conflict.

Conflict can be created through stakes and characters (whom the reader is invested in) who have opposing goals or goals that intersect.

Conflict can make even the most boring of activities seem exciting. For example:

Supermarket food shopping.

This is a mundane, very boring activity that everyone regularly partakes in, but with a bit of conflict a story can be found here.

To begin with, let's make it supermarket shopping at Christmas. This immediately ups the stakes and investment because the reader knows that this is a busy, stressful time of year with often a lot riding on it.

Now, this is a cliche, but, let's say that it's Christmas Eve and the store is about to close, but there's only one turkey left.

Two characters Eve and Steve both want that turkey, but obviously they both can't take it. Realising they both want it, they fight their way across the store to get it.

You can up the stakes by helping the reader investing in the characters. Perhaps Eve's father is dying of cancer and she's afraid that it'll be his last Christmas and she wants it to be perfect - that means having a turkey! Steve can either be a villain who's greedy and only wants an extra turkey so he can have turkey sandwiches on Boxing Day, or you can make the reader have empathy for him too.

Maybe Steve wins and gets the turkey and is distraught that she couldn't get the turkey. She breaks down in front of her father and tells him that she's sorry for ruining his Christmas, for him to explain that she made his Christmas, by being there.

This is a very simple (albeit clichéd) story with something very boring at the centre. It's conflict that brings the story out.

However, it's important to remember that a novel needs to have at least one central conflict/motivation that drives the protagonist through the story. A series of unconnected conflicts containing the same characters is a short story collection, not a novel.

Hope this helps.

 

[RK Wallis]

haracters are introduced

If you are introducing characters and that doesn't happen in the middle of conflict, you're starting the story in the wrong place. Like @Robert M Derry's example, that started with the conflict. If you're trying to pinpoint your starting point, consider this:


Here’s the real truth: your novel itself begins “in the middle of the thing”—the “thing” being the story. What starts on page one is the second half of the story, when the plot kicks in. The second half—the novel itself—will contain large parts of the first in the form of flashbacks, dialogue, and snippets of memory as the protagonist struggles to make sense of what’s happening, and what to do about it. It bears repeating: nothing in this process goes to waste.

But the simple fact remains that without the first half of the story, there can be no second half. The first half establishes where the problem came from and who the protagonist is to begin with, so that the plot you then create can force her to struggle with that problem and, in the process, change.

Cron, Lisa. Story Genius (pp. 31-32). Potter/Ten Speed/Harmony/Rodale. Kindle Edition.

Good luck! We've all been in your shoes. Keep going

 

[Robinne Weiss]

I always write my way into a story, and later decide where it should start. Sometimes that means starting it before my original beginning--adding an exciting scene/chapter to start it off. More often it involves cutting scenes/chapters from the beginning to start at an exciting point. Stuff that happened before the exciting scene might need to be placed at a different point in the story, if it's important, but as often as not, I find I can lose those boring scenes at the beginning. They were necessary for me, like a warmup before exercise, but the reader didn't need them.

 

[Robert M Derry]

I always write my way into a story, and later decide where it should start. Sometimes that means starting it before my original beginning--adding an exciting scene/chapter to start it off. More often it involves cutting scenes/chapters from the beginning to start at an exciting point. Stuff that happened before the exciting scene might need to be placed at a different point in the story, if it's important, but as often as not, I find I can lose those boring scenes at the beginning. They were necessary for me, like a warmup before exercise, but the reader didn't need them.

This is something @AgentPete often mentions on pop-ups when writer's "write themselves into the story" and often writers, when they submit, forget to trim all this introductory stuff from the beginning.

I cut the first 10,000 words off my last novel because I later realised that I'd written it to get into my character's skin - the story didn't actually need it.

@N J Sturgess I'd recommend that you subscribe and watch pop-ups every week. It really helped me understand how to write a good (and a bad!) beginning and the importance of starting the story at the latest possible point.

 

[Robert M Derry]

I'd also suggest that you may find it useful to take some time away (weeks, maybe months) from the manuscript in between drafts.

I know that may seem a little counterintuitive as you just want to get it done, but it can be quite hard to see why something's not working when you're so close to it.

A time gap allows you to have that cold analytical eye when you come back to it and it's much easier to identify flaws in the text and ways to fix them. I'd try to work on something completely different during this break as well as this can help to further the distance.

Also, stick around on Litopia (have a read of @Carol Rose 's craft chats) as all the advice I'm extolling here is stuff I've picked up over the past year in Litopia.

 

[N J Sturgess]

Thanks Robert. I think I've cracked an exciting opening, but will go back eventually and see if anything can be trimmed. My second one I finished a few months back and I know full well that that is going to need a lot of work.

 

[Patricia D]

As I rewrite, I look for opportunities to up the tension, usually by introducing introduce side conflicts amongst the characters, little missteps and disagreements that can make the larger conflict - whatever that may be - more intense. That adds words. Looking for things that might be extraneous and dumping them subtracts words.

 

[AliG]

Cron, Lisa. Story Genius (pp. 31-32). Potter/Ten Speed/Harmony/Rodale. Kindle Edition.

She's so terrific..