First Chapter Woes
Aug. 18th, 2009 11:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sethgrayI'm feeling like I should hit the table of contents and read back over my whole story just to make sure I haven't gotten off track or lost the flow of things somewhere, and the only way you can do that is to start at the beginning and hit go. But here's the thing. I hate chapter one. I really do. As far as requirements for first chapters go it barely hits the minimum, introducing people and showing us a bit of Regan's personality. I'm not sure there's anything technically wrong with it, I just don't like it.
So the obvious thing to do, then, would be to start at chapter two and hit go. I'm not sure my OCD would allow that, but I guess I could give it a whirl. What I really need to do is sit down and brainstorm what exactly I want an improved first chapter to look like, but in order to do that I'd have to put into words just why the current chapter one is bugging me and I'm not sure that I could. There's just this sense of "wrongness" about it to me, in some vague, ill-defined authorish way.
Maybe I could hit up the other writers on my friends list and pick their brains. That might not be a bad idea actually.
In other writing news, I need to decide what I'm going to about the side story this week. I had a plan about doing a little mini-story in sequential order, but I'm not sure that will be feasible. The stuff I need to come across might be over and done with in the main narrative by the time the side story catches up. Which wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing, I guess. More background details to flesh in, while the absolutely imperative stuff has already passed on. I dunno, we'll see.
My whole process is very experimental, as you can probably tell. I've never made it this far in one of my projects before. The only ever thing I've come close to was in one of my previous projects that I churned out 28 chapters of. I only worked on that for maybe two months before I burned out on it. I've already been working on this for over 6 months, 24 weeks plus however long it took me to write up to chapter five before I started posting online.
It's not a stellar amount of progress by any means, but it's a record for me. Small victories, folks. Small victories.
So the obvious thing to do, then, would be to start at chapter two and hit go. I'm not sure my OCD would allow that, but I guess I could give it a whirl. What I really need to do is sit down and brainstorm what exactly I want an improved first chapter to look like, but in order to do that I'd have to put into words just why the current chapter one is bugging me and I'm not sure that I could. There's just this sense of "wrongness" about it to me, in some vague, ill-defined authorish way.
Maybe I could hit up the other writers on my friends list and pick their brains. That might not be a bad idea actually.
In other writing news, I need to decide what I'm going to about the side story this week. I had a plan about doing a little mini-story in sequential order, but I'm not sure that will be feasible. The stuff I need to come across might be over and done with in the main narrative by the time the side story catches up. Which wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing, I guess. More background details to flesh in, while the absolutely imperative stuff has already passed on. I dunno, we'll see.
My whole process is very experimental, as you can probably tell. I've never made it this far in one of my projects before. The only ever thing I've come close to was in one of my previous projects that I churned out 28 chapters of. I only worked on that for maybe two months before I burned out on it. I've already been working on this for over 6 months, 24 weeks plus however long it took me to write up to chapter five before I started posting online.
It's not a stellar amount of progress by any means, but it's a record for me. Small victories, folks. Small victories.