Beginnings

Posted on 20 Jan 2011 by beckylevine

I’m sitting at the coffeehouse, having just dropped my son off to do volunteer work (his first day) at the little science center in town where he, many years ago, took after-school classes. I’m having semi-mushy thoughts about how far he’s come, thinking about the two friends he still has, with whom he took those classes, and thinking about how far they’ve come, too. (Their mothers and I, of course, have not aged a day.)

So here I am, thinking about paths and milestones and the beginnings of all those, when I bump into two blog posts in my Google reader, and I realize there must be something in the air.

Kelly Fineman is posting about the fallow periods in her writing, but she warms us up with some thoughts about how she got started on her writing path. I love that Kelly makes a distinction between when she started and when she committed.

And Robin LaFevers is at the start of a new novel and is letting us into her world with a post about how she begins a project. If you haven’t read any of Robin’s process posts, now would be a great time to tune in. And, tell her, yes, we want more of these!

I began writing so long ago I can’t remember; I thought I had committed fifteen years ago, but no that it really didn’t happen until about three years ago when I was hit with the idea for my MG mystery and got serious, in terms of both hours and revision; I started this WIP about a year ago.

Really, you know, it all blurs together, except for moments like today, when I looked at the bike rack by the science center. It’s one of those racks that’s a single tube of metal curving up and down and up and down–one of those that’s perfect for little kids to climb all over, to swing on and between. And I realized that not my son, not one of his friends, would fit on or in it anymore. I’m not sure it would reach up to their knees.

On the writing path, too, there are moments. Kelley’s talked about hers. Mine are the memories of laying on my bed as a young girl, writing a story into my notebook in that curly, loopy cursive we all experimented with at some time or another. Coming to the early meetings of my first real critique group, drinking tea and sharing words. Sitting in the workshop, half-listening to the teacher and half-scribbling notes about Joel & Victoria, the two cousins in my mystery. Reading the passage about the suffrage march in Washington, D.C., when the white suffragists asked Ida B. Wells to walk at the back of the parade and knowing that I had the next story I had to work on. Realizing, as I finished the first draft, that I still wanted to tell that story, but that it was not the one I was working on at the moment. Having instances of revelation and astonishment about story, when I wanted to dance around the room and/or type words into my computer so fast that the CPU would start smoking. More instances of revelation and astonishment, this time about the writing craft–a way to sharpen a character or heighten plot tension–and finding a way to weave all that into whatever book I was working on.

Where am I today? In the middle of all that, still, and knowing there’ll be more to come. We hear it a lot today, and probably enough that it loses some meaning, but there’s a truth in this statement: It’s all good.

What are your beginnings? Your moments?

The Beginning, The End, The Middle

Beginnings, Middles, & Ends–What Goes Where?

Posted on 9 Mar 20099 Mar 2009 by beckylevine

Friday, I had a pretty productive day. I sat down and did some thinking about some new scenes in my WIP, and I ended up with a basic plot arc–styled after Martha Alderson’s Plot Planner in Blockbuster Plots-Pure and Simple. I took a photo and posted it on my other blog, if you want to check it out.

As I worked on the plot arc, though, I could see all these threads that I don’t have woven in yet. This is fine, obviously, since I’m just getting started. Still, too many loose story threads, just like too many loose threads on my clothes, can drive me a bit nuts until I get them a little more tucked away.

So this morning I’ve been browsing through some writing books–reading up on beginnings, middles, and ends–and trying for an early placement of some of these threads. This seems to help me look at the rising (hopefully!) tension of the plot, to think about where the big things should happen and how I can build to those spots. For me, it’s mostly about what happens:

Before the hero’s first threshold–that inciting incident that is a microcosm of the whole, big story problem.
After the hero’s death (symbolic or otherwise)–when they face their worst crisis and make their most important (and hardest) choice.
Everything in between.

Here are a few things I came up with, in general terms, for what we should be doing in each of those sections.

Beginnings

Introduce the compelling hero
Establish the hero’s story goal/problem
Create a push/pull tension for hero around that problem
Establish the primary/most threatening antagonist
Establish the story world
Disturb that story world (seriously disturb it!)

Middles

Strengthen hero’s goal & opposition to that goal
Amp up the stakes for hero
Amp up the stakes for the antagonist
Strengthen and complicate character relationships
Throw in some new, surprising information (Thanks to Jordan E. Rosenfeld, in Make a Scene, for this one.)
Establish a sense of death hanging over the story world (And thanks to James Scott Bell, in Plot & Structure, for this one.)
Set up hero to make big choice, while making it “impossible” for hero to make that choice
Seed and (later) reveal secrets.

Endings

Resolve all story threads
Test, one more time, hero’s big choice
Show the impact of that choice choice–on hero and the whole story world

What about you. When you plot, do you just work through scenes in the order they play out? Or do you, like me, try to position them in one of the main sections of the story arc? And, please, freel free to tell me anything I’ve missed! 🙂

Revising, The Beginning, Writing Books

Les Edgerton’s Hooked

Posted on 30 Nov 2008 by beckylevine

Back in October, I talked about The Writer’s Journey, by Christopher Vogler. In that post, I mentioned Les Edgerton’s book Hooked: Write Fiction That Grabs Readers at Page One & Never Lets Them Go. I said I’d talk more about Edgerton’s book in another post.

So here we are.

With November and NaNoWriMo ending, and the new year heading our way fast, I thought this would be a good time to pick up this thread. Revision is, in a big part, about structure–about what happens when and which scenes go where. Edgerton’s book is solely and completely about the beginnings of a story, but (pardon the pun) that seems as good a place as any to start.

Edgerton talks about a lot of the same things Vogler does—at least in terms of the early part of the hero’s journey. Edgerton may not call everything by the same names, but in his chapters, you’ll find the ordinary world, the inciting incident, the threshold, etc. The big difference, though, between the two books is Edgerton’s emphasis on how quickly we, as writers, have to get those starting points onto the page.

I write fiction for kids–middle-grade and YA readers. These readers are not known for their patience with authors. You can blame it on action movies and video games, or you can credit these kids with the sense and intelligence to recognize and appreciate a tight, fast-moving opener. As someone who, in the past ten years went from reading (and loving) 700-page Victorian novels to devouring 250-page tense and terse, funny and furious YA books—I can say the decade has been a good education in writing.

Because it’s not just kids’ books that move more quickly today; it’s all books. At first, when you realize just how much Edgerton is asking you to do in the first chapter, first scene, first page, first paragraph, it’s intimidating. And part of your brain may go into the “I don’t have to” whine. But keep reading. And go back to the books you’ve lost most in the past couple of years. You’ll see that he’s right.

It’s not just that we’re told over and over that agents, if we’re lucky, read the first five pages. It’s not just that we know most book buyers skim the first page, maybe the last, then make their decision about whether to buy that book or leave it on the shelf where they found it. It’s that, these days, a good story sucks us in from Page 1, hooks us, and goes racing along so quickly that we have to grab on and ride, just to keep up.

This is the kind of story I want to be writing.

Thankfully, Edgerton doesn’t just point out the necessity of this kind of beginning. He gives thorough, detailed information about the big pieces of this skinny little beginning, and he follows up with seriously helpful (and funny) instructions for how to put those pieces together.

If you haven’t read Hooked, take a look. Especially, if you’re looking at a revision, post-NaNo or not, take a look. I think you’ll be glad.

And don’t forget to check out Martha Alderson’s blog, Plot Whisperer for Writers and Readers, all through the month of December, for tips on plotting out your revision. Martha will be guest-blogging here, too, soon!