The shape of a story, particularly the start

[meg_evonne]

Hey Adam,

Probably best to cut to the pros:

• Check out Jim's writing blog, good stuff and entertaining
• I think Bob gave us this site, writingxcuses.com  listen to all of them, yep all of them.  again great stuff, it's free, and its entertaining.
• Workshops are excellent and worth the money, but check 'em out first.

From what I can tell there comes a point where you have to face the bear in the corner (your insecurities) with a whip and chain and make your own calls.  From what I've discovered, your first chapter will suck and will suck for sometime.  That shouldn't keep you from writing, writing, writing.  Don't let people distract you from writing to completion the first draft.  It's a private battle of a very long war. You have plenty of time to figure out that first chapter later. 

Don't let well minded idiots read your stuff.  Idiots are friends and family that love you, but who can mess with your head big time in innocent ways.  They'll blow up your stuff as the next Heinlein, or they'll make loving kind statements that, if you followed up on, would completely change your storyline.  You'll start sweating it out trying to fix something on a blasted first draft.  First drafts are supposed to suck--grammer, continuity, weak characters the whole horrid uglies.

What I would have someone check for you is your consistancy on Point of View.  Screwing POV up can take a lifetime to correct later.  If you don't have that dead set and right on, later drafts will be mindboggling, toss it into the trash, discouraging.

Finally world building vs action...  First book, I see no way to get past a house editor or an agent without action or really incredible dialog.  If you want someone to publish it, I mean.  You get 2, 3, 5 pages in front of an agent, it can't be lovely gentle world building.  Now put in action, snappy dialog, AND world building and you've got something that has a chance to last 2 minutes on a desk before it hits the slush pile.  STILL YOU DON't write that first!  You get the blasted rough draft done. By the time you've lived in that world long enough to do that, you've got the knowledge and skill hopefully to put together a supercharged, unique, agent devouring beginning.

I've been ranting.  Now back to my own writing.   

And before I make a complete fool of myself.  Some friends and family are wonderful readers.  Especially if you're like the actress that questions why she is doing---toss a famous face into a mall and it's got to build up the ego.  There is a lot of value in that.  In fact some friends and family make excellent critics, especially if you have a spouse who will read pages throughout the whole process.  That could be invaluable....or grounds for a divorce I suspose.  :-)

[bookivore]

To add my 2 cents:

Look with deep suspicion on anything you put in just because the reader needs to know it.  As the author, you need to know it.  Your main character might not need to know it, most of the people he's bugging with questions might not need to know it, and the character who DOES know it will act on that knowledge and let it leak somehow or another.

On the opposite hand, don't keep secrets about what the POV character thinks he's doing.  If he's sitting around drinking because he's trying not to think about how he just was dumped, that's what he's thinking about and it should at least be hinted at. 

So from this argument, you could open with a lot of description of messy apartment, beer cans, and the guy opening another one and pretending he's just watching TV while you clue in the reader with some line like "I hadn't watched the Friday lineup for months, since Sue always wanted to go barhopping on Friday - let's not think about Sue."  But pretty soon you need to introduce the current problem that he's going to start dealing with.

If the problem is that he's in the witness protection program and his cover is right now being blown you do NOT have to open with any history about that.  He's sitting there trying not to think about Sue when there are gunshots in the street and he reacts from what he already knows - and he'll be explaining things by his assumptions.

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

Look with deep suspicion on anything you put in just because the reader needs to know it. 

On the other hand, you have to play fair with the reader and tell them everything they need to know for your story to make sense.

Your main character might not need to know it, most of the people he's bugging with questions might not need to know it, and the character who DOES know it will act on that knowledge and let it leak somehow or another.

Which is just a more subtle and indirect way of letting the reader know it.

On the opposite hand, don't keep secrets about what the POV character thinks he's doing.  If he's sitting around drinking because he's trying not to think about how he just was dumped, that's what he's thinking about and it should at least be hinted at. 

Depends on the POV you are using.  Camera eye that shows nobody's thoughts is a legitimate approach.

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

I intend to avoid romance, as every girl I've ever known had informed me in no uncertain terms that I'm a complete idiot about anything even vaguely related to emotions.

People's emotional wiring does vary rather a lot.  I avoid writing about romance, in general, because I think the mainstream Western cultural notions of romance are not a positive model to present, and have some really unpleasant failure modes - how much romantic comedy behaviour would come across as stalking if you did it in real life ?  I try to play up the importance of good solid friendships becuase I think they are way too often subordinated to rmantic interests in unhealthy ways.  Write what feels real to you and it will be valid, whether it matches with the experience of the girls you know or not.

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

From what I can tell there comes a point where you have to face the bear in the corner (your insecurities) with a whip and chain and make your own calls.  From what I've discovered, your first chapter will suck and will suck for sometime. 

There are a lot of good successful writers out there giving good writing advice.  Jim. Stephen King. Harlan Ellison.  Patricia Wrede.  Tim Powers plans everything down to what happens in each individual conversation before setting one word of story down; Steven Brust makes it up as he goes along and cuts the boring or stuck bits later. It's worth looking closely at the advice lots of people give, because there's more than one way to be a successful writer, and trying to adopt the entirety of any one person's method uncritically has the potential to get you into trouble if your method is fundamentally different.

Joel Rosenberg says every writer has a million words of crap to get out of their system before they produce anything worth writing, and I think he is more or less right on that. I certainly noticed a difference when I passed that point.

[meg_evonne]

Joel Rosenberg says every writer has a million words of crap to get out of their system before they produce anything worth writing, and I think he is more or less right on that. I certainly noticed a difference when I passed that point.

Brilliant.  ty for sharing!