It never ceases to amaze me how much writing can teach me about the way I think. For nearly 4 months, I hated the beginning of Morgan (working title). I didn’t know why, exactly. It was everything one would want: it began with heavy action, it introduced two major characters, and it started off the conflict nicely. But something was missing. And then, nearly eighty pages into the story, I realized just what was wrong. The way I had written it set me up to fall.

Imagine yourself as a good, law-abiding citizen. Your favorite uncle was a police officer and since your father died young, this uncle was like a surrogate father to you. As a result, it was natural that you were fed ideas of justice and would follow in his footsteps and join the police. Now, still green and bushy-eyed, you meet someone the exact opposite. She’s had a hard life, she doesn’t believe in justice, her mantra is self-reliance. You know she’s done shady things in the past, perhaps horrible things, but you can’t prove any of it. It’s just a feeling. And this isn’t Law and Order, you can’t bend the rules to fit your need, so you let her go.

This is the situation of one of my main characters, Quinntin Blake. Sure, he’s fascinated with her, but how far will that fascination go? Will it go far enough that he’ll travel with her?

In the story’s current incarnation, the answer was no. For 4 months, I agonized and rewrote it, but every time it was the same thing. Finally, a month ago, after a few weeks of frustrated writer’s block, I decided to just drop the beginning. Write their meeting happening a totally different way. This time, instead of meeting in the city, they meet in the desert; instead of her being heroic, he saves her; instead of fleeing at night, she flees during the day. I basically totally changed it.

And it worked. It wasn’t so action-heavy, but it worked much better. Why was I so fixated on the way I had it before? I wondered. If I’d only let it go, I would’ve been satisfied 4 months ago. And the best part was once I fixed the beginning, the whole plot shifted itself to fit with this new beginning — and it fit better! Ideas came to me that I hadn’t thought of before and my writer’s block was cured. I’ve been writing about 2,000+ words a day since Friday, and all because I changed the first three chapters.

1:35 pm | Category: Writing | |

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