When it comes to writing stories -- regardless of whether they're short stories or novels -- I struggle with deciding where to start. That was true for Prime, as well as for the vignette I'm posting for the Caffrey Conversation series this weekend.
Warning for spoilers for Caffrey Disclosure
For Caffrey Flashback, what I wrote as the first scene now appears a chapter or two later. For Disclosure... Wow. With Caffrey Disclosure, I originally intended to open with the scene where Diana arrives on a missing persons case and Neal realizes that the two missing people are his cousins. I'd thought as the investigation unfolded from there we'd learn about Urban Legend. However, that simply proved too unwieldy, and instead the scene with Diana is in chapter 25.
At least for those stories procrastination wasn't an issue. I can't say the same for my vignette and for Prime Conditions.
For Treasure Hunt, the vignette I'm posting this weekend, once again I faced indecision about where to start. I wrote a couple of opening scenes that aren't in the final story at all. I don't consider those scenes a waste of time, as they helped me think through what was happening and why. What I realized is that I had a plot, but not a reason for the plot.
In other words, I had a list of things that were going to happen in a logical order, but struggled with stringing those elements together in story form because I wasn't clear on what the characters were going to gain or learn from the experience. I needed clarity around that before the I could bring the events to life.
With that clarity I knew where to start and had the motivation to push me to keep writing to the end.
I attribute some of my procrastination in starting Prime to the same cause. I knew my main characters and what was going to happen to them, but I didn't know why those things mattered. Initially I'd thought of the story as a mystery, and the "why" was to catch a criminal. As my thinking evolved, I realized I didn't want to write a mystery in a futuristic setting. What I wanted to write was a science fiction story, and I was lacking the insight into how the events of the story change my main character. Once I could answer that, the words began to flow.
And the starting point? Before NaNoWriMo, I had written about 23,000 words of a novel that opened with the main character in the middle of an investigation. I also had a lot of backstory for the main character to be sprinkled throughout. It was so much backstory, in fact, that I even considered splitting it into two stories where the first one takes place when the main character is a child. That might have been fun, but I knew that the events of Zach's childhood and adulthood were too interconnected to split like that.
As I thought through how Zach will change as a result of the events in the story, I was able to settle on a starting point. Zach's journey -- and the novel -- begins with him leaving home to protect his mother. We see a couple of chapters of him at home, setting up the conflict and the issues he needs to resolve. Then he embarks on his journey, learning things along the way and gaining allies who will help him.
I don't have all of the answers yet regarding how Zach will reach his goal and all of the things that will impede him along the way. I guess you could say I've figured out the protagonist's motivations and the journey that results for what he wants, and now I need to figure out the same things for the antagonist.
Thanks to figuring out where Zach is going and why, I was able to gain the momentum I needed to write 50,000 words in November for NaNoWriMo. Hopefully once I reach the same level of clarity for the bad guys, I'll have the momentum to complete the story.
Speaking of NaNoWriMo, expect an upcoming post on what the experience was like for me, and what I'd do differently if I try it again.
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