Okay, now I've filled you in on some of the motivations and challenges in writing A DREAM LOST and the DEVIL'S DUE. Where to begin? Where should the story really start? Should the opening recount what led up to the kidnapping in reality, or should it open with a strong fictional scene?
As a writer you must choose am opener that grabs the reader and leaves them wanting more. Action, unanswered questions, challenges...all good devices. The very first version didn't start there. It started way back in Jen's childhood, when she took her first ballet lesson. It stayed like that for years, describing the little girl's love for dancing, what the studio looked like, how her mother acted...you get the idea.
Well, again, if you were giving the account in a magazine article, that's what you might do. But this wasn't a magazine article, nor was it going to be reality. My vision for the book (it was one book at that time) was fiction inspired by a combination of real situations that happened to diverse people. These would all be melded into one person's life in the book. The more I learned about writing fiction, the more I realized that my opening chapters were dead wrong. In one of the versions, I don't remember which one, I made the bold move, although it hurt more than I can tell you, and cut the entire opening chapters of this enormous manuscript.
Elements were saved to use as memories or flashbacks, but they were given a paragraph or two of tight, emotional writing instead of a blow-by-possibly-boring- blow description of what really happened. The term "artistic license" comes to mind.
The more I'd let the manuscript get cold, and then re-read it, the more I knew I had to have an opening scene that wrenched your guts out. What could be more terrifying than waking up in a strange room, head fuzzy, only to discover that your hands and feet are bound. When you try to talk, you can't because of the gag in your mouth. That's how the opening scene was born. I had to be Jen. I had to be in that awful room mentally and feel the terror she felt. And I can truthfully say, I scared myself during that writing.
About three years ago, I read the chapter aloud in my writer's group. Unbelievably, one of the members actually had been kidnapped. My chapter, although gripping, still lacked some of what would really happen in the person's mind, in their reactions. So, after the meeting we chatted, and she told me what a person really would do in this situation--what she did and thought--and I used it. And, it worked.
More tomorrow.
--Arliss
No comments:
Post a Comment