I miss Sally and our morning coffee. But I’m on the road this week, teaching at conferences, and judging contests and I thought it might help to see a quick summary of the common mistakes I’m seeing as I look at entries and talk to aspiring authors. So here they are, in no particular order. Not starting the story with a compelling situation. So many entries and rough drafts are starting in a place where the author is either explaining the character’s backstory or creating the storyworld instead of getting to the character and creating a situation where we see him interacting with his world, setting up for the inciting incident (or even in the middle or after it). Remember, the first three chapters of your novel are the […]
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Quick Skills: 5 Essentials of a First Chapter
There are a lot of checklists for building a first chapter, and sometimes they can get overwhelming. MBT has an advanced checklist we use to help people build their Frasier Contest Scene (it’s the same checklist I use when building my first chapters!). However, I admit, it can get overwhelming. So, let’s start building that chapter one with 5 essential elements. In fact, this is step two in your process. As Sally and I talked about yesterday in Conversations, sometimes it just helps the writing process to let your characters walk on the page and wander around a bit. We can hear them, talk to them, discover if we have profiled them correctly. No, these wanderings probably won’t be the final first chapter, but it gives you a chance to […]
Read the RestConversations: First Chapter Essentials
“I’m angry with you!” Sally said as she sat down. She was smiling, so I frowned. “You let me write the first chapter before I was ready.” “Oh, that,” I said. “Yes, I did, knowing you weren’t quite ready. But I knew you had so much story in you that if you didn’t get started you’d only get frustrated. I know why you weren’t ready, but you tell me.” “I didn’t really know what my character wanted, nor how to hint at his greatest fear in the first chapter, so I created exactly the wrong scene.” “You created the scene that helped you jump start your story. You were doing a lot of “Wax On, Wax Off” and getting ansty. So, I told you to simply let your character walk […]
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April’s Writer’s Challenge and The Mountain’s Children
Congratulations to Delores Topliff who won the March writer’s Challenge with her delicious story “The Mountain’s Children” (Challenge: Give us an argument!) “Let her go!” Raymond Young Bear shouted, running forward, fists ready. The scrappy Indian youth had been walking Vancouver, Washington’s Main Street, killing time, past Shumway Junior High, where he should have been enrolled, when he heard the girl’s shrill screams for help. Racing behind the front brick building, he found three white teens pushing a young white girl against a wall, forcing her down, slapping her. She screamed again, eyes pleading, until someone clapped a meaty hand over her mouth. The biggest kid saw Raymond coming. “Scram, Indian. Or you’re next!” They punched the girl’s belly, making her drop, fencing her against the wall with their legs. […]
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