My previously published books have been in the traditional
mystery genre. Now I’m in the midst of writing my first cozy series,
Southernmost Secrets. Writing the first book of any planned series is a
balancing act. The writer needs to introduce characters, especially the core
group, make the setting come alive, and make readers care about the characters
and their lives. The writer needs to do all of that without an information dump.
That’s basic writing 101. No information dump.
Unfortunately, the writer is participating in the same learning curve as the
reader. When I started Pirates on Parade, the first of the series, I had no
idea of the depth of my characters or the details of their lives or setting.
That is something this writer learns through the writing.
I raced through the book to chapter 13. Then, I stalled.
Dead-in-the-water stall. Blank-page-for-days stall. Something was wrong and it
held me back. The premise? The lead in? The plot? Whatever it was, I could not
move forward. Not without fixing the foundation. Rather than follow the stellar advice of Jodi Picoult that you can’t edit a blank
page and soldier on, I decided to go back and review my prior chapters. Try to
identify where the story went off the rails.
The problem was in chapters 7 to 10. My characters talked
about life in the Florida Keys. Hank Wittie, the protagonist, shared her love of
her home and how the Keys shaped her. They brought the characters’ emotional
side to life and laid the foundation for part of Hank’s story arc. They were
wonderful chapters. Except they did nothing to add to the story at hand. They
were four chapters of three women sitting on a porch in the Florida Keys
talking. INFORMATION DUMP.
I loved those chapters, but they had to go. The story needed
action not introspection. It’s a mystery not a history. With a heavy heart, I
highlighted all four chapters and moved them to my outtakes file. I killed my
darlings. Know what? It hurt. Oh yes, they had served a purpose for me, I got
to know a lot about Hank by writing those chapters, but the reader does not
need to know how the sausage is made. Nor should they know.
Chapters 7 to 10 are now in the work-in-process stage. They
will likely become chapter 7 and maybe 8. Depends on what action Ozzie, the Key
West Police detective, decides to take. This is where he needs to shine. Hank
and the rest of the characters will share their stories, but in teaspoons, not
quarts.
I killed my darlings. I’m not sorry.
Writer, have you ever had to painfully kill your darlings?
Readers, do you think some darlings need killing?
I killed an entire book, but I periodically pull it out for secondary character ideas and details.
ReplyDeleteIn each book, I have a discard file. I keep it because some of it is good writing, but usually tangents I stray to instead of keeping true to the plot. For the last book, I killed two POVs. Luckily, I brought them in for just a chapter so I deleted the entire chapter. Valid criticism, which I heeded, but then, some of the illusions and dialogue were fun--but discards. We truely are writers who kill!
ReplyDelete@ Margaret - An entire book! Oh, my. So glad it's not going to waste.
ReplyDelete@EB - Great play on the blog name! Hanging on to the discards is a fabulous idea. Some writers have told me they have gotten entire plots from their outtakes. No writing is wasted.
ReplyDeleteOuttake are necessary, but that doesn't mean the time spent writing them is wasted.
ReplyDeleteThat's so true KM.
ReplyDeleteI've only done a few outtakes over the years of writing that I recall. But I've been writing for a lot of years so maybe I'm just forgetting when I did do that.
ReplyDeleteGood to hear from your, Gloria. I admit, I've done the odd paragraph, and often I let myself write backstory for the first chapter of the first draft to ground myself knowing it will be taken out, but this is a first for me too. Still, I learned a lot about my characters in those chapters so they weren't a loss.
ReplyDeleteBackstory is tough, not only in the first novel in a series, but in later novels. Congrats on making the right decision.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was writing One Taste Too Many, it moved along well and then I had to stop for awhile. When I went back to writing the book, it didn't seem to work - even though I was almost finished with it. I stopped and thought about it and realized I had pegged the wrong character as the killer. At that point, I threw out the second half of the book and quickly rewrote it completely. It killed me to throw out my darlings....but it made it such a better final book.
ReplyDeleteYou did the right thing, too! But, oh, it hurts.
The valuable lesson here is not to totally kill your darlings, but to add bits of what you cut to different places in the story. Avoid the information dump, but still give readers a glimpse into your characters pasts.
ReplyDelete