Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Kind of Sort of THE END

I'm trying something new. In the next few days, I plan to finish the first draft of my novel ALMOST FINAL CURTAIN (the second vampire princess of St. Paul book). I'm nearly there. In fact, I just wrote "THE END," but I didn't mean it.

Consistently, my beta readers tell me something along the lines of "the ending was a bit rushed." Today, I decided to just give into the impulse completely. Instead of roughing out the scenes, I just wrote a synopsis of the last few pages.

My plan, and I do have one, is that maybe having done this, I can take a breath and can try something new, like maybe writing non-linearly. One of the things I always rush through at the end is description. Like a reader, I just want to hit the good parts. So,I've written down placeholders for the good bits. I'm hoping now I can try going back and filling in the stuff that excites me the most FIRST, and do the others later.

Perhaps this sounds ridiculously simple to you. I've never been the kind of writer that can do that jumping around thing, though. Everything is always written in order. I never skip ahead. (I do, of course, in the revision process skip back and fill in, but then I've also been known to re-write entire books during revision too.)

This sort of sounds like gibberish, but it seemed monumental when I thought of it. Wish me luck at any rate.

3 comments:

Kelly Swails said...

Luck!

Eleanor said...

There are a lot of writers who can jump around and fill in later. I very rarely do this, but there are good arguments for it. There's no question (for me anyway) that going back and revising or expanding is easier than writing the first draft. Get the damn thing done and then fix it.

~ Mari said...

I never write in order. I learned that lesson writing my first book. It dragged and dragged, and then I ended up with writer's block for two years. Then I figured out that, "Hey!" I don't have to write chronologically - I can write whatever scene is in my head at a given time and piece it all together later.

And I agree with Eleanor. Editing and revising, imho, is always simpler than the first run.