Ever since I put the final period at the end of the last sentence of JACOB WONDERBAR AND THE COSMIC SPACE KAPOW, I had always imagined the beginning of #2 starting a very certain particular way. It was unexpected! Shocking! A little bit unsettling!
But after I submitted a partial to my editor, she came back and said (very politely): the opening didn’t work. My agent (very politely) agreed.
GAH!
But… but… I wanted to sputter, this is how I always imagined it. It’s part of the fabric of the novel. How can I write this novel if this isn’t the beginning?
Then I took a step back and realized something: they were totally right. It didn’t work! Not even a little!
Thankfully, trained publishing professionals saved me from one of the deadliest foes of the writer: the first idea.
First ideas are much like first loves. You fall so hard for someone, they are your everything, you love them to the point of rendering you completely bonkers. Then there’s a calamitous breakup, and you think the world is quite possibly going to explode. Then some time passes and you realize that person was perhaps quite nice but you know what they kind of smelled funny and maybe I should have wondered about that throwing star collection before I found one stuck ominously in the dashboard of my car.
Um. Where was I? Oh yes. First ideas.
The point is this: first ideas have a tendency to become intertwined with your conception of the entire novel. You start to think: this is how this character is. This is how this world is. This is how this novel is. If it doesn’t work, well I guess the whole thing isn’t going to work.
But who owns those characters? Who owns that world? You do! You’re the writer. You can change it to make it work. You really can. You own your character and plot and setting.
Every book on writing I have ever read talks about how dangerous your first ideas are, and it’s positively absolutely true. Some say you have to think of ten bad ideas to find every good one, some say you should discard five GOOD ideas for every one you keep, Stephen King advocates darling killing, etc. etc. The one thing all this advice has in common is that no idea should be sacred. If it doesn’t work it doesn’t work.
It’s so important to move past those first ideas and to avoid making them too intertwined with how you envision the entire project. Obviously you can’t change a novel beyond a point where it stops being the story you want to tell, but short of that, everything is changeable.
Take a throwing star to that first idea. Your second or tenth or hundredth idea is bound to be better.
Nathan, I think you're absolutely right! Personally, I'd KILL for a good coach/mentor. And I'm not alone. So few of us writing folk have them, which is one of the reasons you are so appreciated, since you are a natural born teacher and share that with everyone here.
But that's a little different than the actual 'vision' for the book. For those of us in the second camp, the vision is a very personal thing. Other people, when they give feedback, are always coming from their own perspective, their own vision. As an author (in the second camp) that has to be weighed and measured against the very personal and 'sacred' vision of the author's creativity.
I hope that made sense. And I always want to hedge everything I say here with "I could be wrong", but that's how I see from the stance of a more personal and creative vision.
mira-
Oh, I definitely agree with that. I shouldn't have said there's nothing sacred about an author's vision. It's not quite the right way to say it. I really believe an author should only compromise to a certain point and never beyond what they're comfortable with. I think the author should be telling the story they want to tell and shouldn't compromise the essential nature of what they want to do.
Beyond that I think there should be a lot of flexibility. It's always a tricky balance.
Nathan,
Absolutely. And there's the other side, that an author who writes without listening to any feedback is going to be in deep trouble! So, I think you're right. It's a tricky balance and flexibility is very important!
Good post.
So sad, so true. It doesn't help when all your friends who have read your "final" draft have become invested in every word and scene. I have a publisher who is very interested in a manuscript, but she wants major revisions. It won't even be terribly difficult: I see how it should go, but I have to do it swimming upstream against the love of my beta readers. I've compromised by saving a copy that remains untouched while I work on the…well…working copy.
Marian Allen
The beginning of the story and the beginning of the book are two separate things. The first is for the writer, the second for the reader.
I'm anon @7:59
"I'm actually surprised this has been a persistent theme in the comments. Granted, not all feedback is good feedback, but I don't think there's anything sacred about an author's "vision." "
That's because we've been reading you for a long time, we are fans, and we trust your vision over someone else's :))
I realize that this is probably a stupid question, but how do you determine whether something "works" or doesn't work?
For me, it's not so much cutting the chaff that's the problem. It's more figuring out which parts are neccesary and which parts aren't.
Any advice on this?
Okay! Whose pernicious first idea was it to push this damn snowball to Alaska?
Hi Nathan! I'm so glad I found your blog… so much good stuff here! This is such a great post… I had this idea when I was horrible sick from morning sickness to write a book on morning sickness… well, guess what, great as that book would be, it wasn't marketable and I had plenty of agents tell me so. I looked back at my proposal and saw that it did have some redeemable stuff in it, so I changed the angle to a Christian pregnancy guide (with a chapter on morning sickness) and it sold really quickly.
Great post. I've struggled with killing my darlings many times before, and it has killed many a story or article because of it. Of course, it's the same with a business or project – you're extremely unlikely to get it right the first time, or for that matter, the first time you think you got it right. You almost have to assume you are wrong in general, and if you have that mindset, you can make great progress.
Thanks for the post!
Late to this dance, but so true!
Crit group member loved a (now deleted) scene in my almost finished first novel, but three others (including an outside source) universally agreed its implausibility was too huge to overcome. I didn't believe them, and went full steam ahead.
The writing was killer and I didn't heed advice. Ten chapters later it was a huge mess. So I took the tiniest gold nuggets from that pile and started over. I wouldn't have a better product today if not for tossing that scene.
And with that, if you don't ditch a scene/chapter/character not working, you're forcing the writing to meld to what isn't working, making it and you appear amateurish. Good point, Nathan, as always!