ONCE UPON A TIME

Great beginnings. Great first lines.

I’ve been wrestling with a new beginning to my book (Feltus Ovalton and the Awful Becoming)- or perhaps I should change that to awful beginning? This often happens once I start the revision process. Something which looked fine to me when I was writing it, especially early on in the story, seems contrived and unwieldy once I’ve had the time to reflect. I thought I was being awfully clever this time because I kept the feeling of the first book, but therein lies great danger I think. My second book shouldn’t be anything like my first book. I mean of course it must make sense plot-wise and the characters must remain consistent but I should avoid anything formulaic even if I do think it’s smart and/ or funny. There needs to be some kind of evolution. So after a huge number of false starts I’ve come up with a chapter I think sets everything off. We’ll see what my editor thinks. I’ve also written somewhat of a new ending although usually that’s clear to me from the beginning. It’s kind of nice having these scenes bracket the rest of the book. I know where I’m starting from and I know what I’m aiming for and hopefully that helps write all the rest of the stuff in the middle with plenty of opportunity to deviate wildly of course. I hate to admit it (so please don’t tell anybody) but I’ve finally come round to the whole outline idea. Or rather, I prefer to write a lengthy and detailed synopsis that I can work off of and move around. The synopsis I wrote for Feltus 2 ended up being 21 pages long and I don’t know how much of it will end up in the finished book but it sure beats writing 300 pages and discovering at the end of it that nothing hangs together and it was a huge waste of time.
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