For the past week I have tried to work from the beginning of the novel and build up to the First Plot Point. The problem is: My main character went through a lot of stuff while she was alive BUT, the story really doesn't start until she dies. I keep finding myself skipping around and working more on that part of the story than any other. Which is irritating (yet at the same time exciting, if that makes any sense).
I keep telling myself to just right from the beginning and then when it comes time for the rewrite I can do the index card method and place scenes in strategic places that are back story. However, the problem with that is, there's foreshadowing in those bits. Yet I don't want this to be, as one of my helpful aunts put it, "the longest novel ever".
When I started this story I wanted to tell the life, death and resurrection (even tho it's not exactly but that's the term I'm using for right now, the point is shes back from the dead), and everything in between that leads up to how she handles the irony of what's to come after she's murdered. I am not telling the story of her life as it happens everyday, only the bits that make a big impact on her and those around her. The issue with that is the potential of the first few years of her life seeming "episodic" in literary terms. Even though each episode is very connected unlike traditional tales. Her life from the time she's born to the time she is banished spans about 20 some odd years. After that, it becomes centuries. I have all the inciting incidences, plot points, subplots, the mid-point , etc., all written, I just have to build the bridges to each one.
But how do you do that to where the story flows when you have, with no better way of putting it, time jumps?
I have a post it on my wall directly in front of me that says : "Remember! It doesn't have to be perfect the first time around!! Just Write!"
I wrote that because I kept catching myself editing before I had even finished a page. Or trashing whole scenes because I couldn't remember where I was going with it. I have questions up to that I have yet to answer.....
Hmmmm, I think I need to revisit my themes again.
I keep telling myself to just right from the beginning and then when it comes time for the rewrite I can do the index card method and place scenes in strategic places that are back story. However, the problem with that is, there's foreshadowing in those bits. Yet I don't want this to be, as one of my helpful aunts put it, "the longest novel ever".
When I started this story I wanted to tell the life, death and resurrection (even tho it's not exactly but that's the term I'm using for right now, the point is shes back from the dead), and everything in between that leads up to how she handles the irony of what's to come after she's murdered. I am not telling the story of her life as it happens everyday, only the bits that make a big impact on her and those around her. The issue with that is the potential of the first few years of her life seeming "episodic" in literary terms. Even though each episode is very connected unlike traditional tales. Her life from the time she's born to the time she is banished spans about 20 some odd years. After that, it becomes centuries. I have all the inciting incidences, plot points, subplots, the mid-point , etc., all written, I just have to build the bridges to each one.
But how do you do that to where the story flows when you have, with no better way of putting it, time jumps?
I have a post it on my wall directly in front of me that says : "Remember! It doesn't have to be perfect the first time around!! Just Write!"
I wrote that because I kept catching myself editing before I had even finished a page. Or trashing whole scenes because I couldn't remember where I was going with it. I have questions up to that I have yet to answer.....
Hmmmm, I think I need to revisit my themes again.