The hardest chapter

[khiemtran]

The hardest chapter in the WIR is, embarassingly, the first. I've just finished my fourth version of it, mostly by poring over the previous three versions and picking out the bits that fit best together. I've got a nagging suspicion that I still won't be happy with it the next time I read it cold, but I'm going to have to try to let it stand.

Part of the problem is that so much of the rest of the story depends on the opening chapter, which limits the amount of change I can make without breaking things downstream. Another part is that the chapter was originally drafted before I'd decided on the voice I wanted for the story and some of the parts of it don't fit. Another problem is that I've gone over the chapter so many times now that anything other than the original version just seems wrong to me, even though my test readers haven't complained.

There's also a fair bit of self-imposed pressure not to start the story with a weak chapter, especially when it comes to submission time.

Anyway, it's done now, and it will have to do. Now onto the second hardest chapter (yes, Chapter two)...

Comments

[nycshelly.livejournal.com]

Can you start with chapter 2? Maybe feed in some info from chapter 1? Okay, I'm mostly being facetious, but... :)

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

Actually, I did try starting at Chapter 2 in one version. But the events in Chapter 1 don't work quite as well in flashback and the whole nature of the story changed. (Chapter 1 deals with two of the characters as children, chapter 2 starts with one of them as an adult.)

[nycshelly.livejournal.com]

hmmm.... When something like this happens to me, something not quite feeling right and whatever I try doesn't work, it usually means I haven't figured out what's wrong yet, but something definitely is wrong. It's typically not in how I wrote the thing, but what I wrote. Maybe the nature of the story is wrong. When I redid my WIR the second time, along with revamping the protagonist, I changed another character. I had her dead at the start of the story (well, she wasn't really, but no one knew that). With her playing a different role in the story and in the protagonist's life, so much fell into place. It was different, but it worked and I ended up solving a problem I hadn't realized I'd had, that this other character hadn't been working, either, because I was too focused on the problems with the protag to notice.