« The Curtain Closes on All For Kids | Main | Shangri Lar »
July 11, 2008
Beginnings
There is nothing like a revision to get me to thinking about . . . .anything else but revising. So I'm allowing myself a few short moments to blog and then I have to get back to work.
What I'm mulling over today is the beginning of the book and finding that balance between hooking the readers' attention while at the same time giving the story space to unfold. I'd been one of those who thought every book needed to begin with a huge bang, but while I worked on the revisions of Hattie Big Sky, I gained some new insights, thanks to my brilliant editor. She pointed out that the reader needed a chance to get to know Hattie, to understand what her "ordinary" world was like to be able to connect with her more fully. That is why the first chapter ended up starting with Hattie at Uncle Holt's and Aunt Ivy's rather than on the homestead.
I was thinking about beginnings, too, as I read two very different books lately. First, was Patricia McCormick's powerful and gut-wrenching Sold. Young Lakshmi's being sold into prostitution is made all the more horrible because we spend the first fifty pages with this sweet young Nepalese girl as she tends her goat and helps her mother. We care so much about this individual girl because we have been given the opportunity to get to know her, which is what makes this a fabulous novel rather than an issue book.
Written hundred of years earlier, The Secret Garden, by Frances Hodgson Burnett, spent a goodly amount of time allowing the reader to get acquainted with the very unlikeable Mary before she is introduced to Dickon and the magic of an untended garden. The garden would have been a mere sentimental gimmick without the chance to know how much Mary needed its power of healing and redemption.
So yesterday, I gave myself permission to start ten steps back in my story, to build a solid front porch for my reader (I am ever the optimist -- let's hope there will be readers!) to step up onto before reaching the front door that leads him or her into my character's story home.
My time is up! Back to work.
You, too.
Posted by kirby at July 11, 2008 08:56 AM
Comments
Best luck in your revisions, Kirby! I loved Hattie, so I'm anxious to read your next book!!!
Posted by: Mac McCool at July 18, 2008 10:17 AM