Andrew Jack Writing

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One, Two… Thirty?

Posted on | October 30, 2009 | 1 Comment

I’m not sure if this is going to help you, but it sure helped me.

I’m good at the first two chapters of an story I write, typically I can give you a couple of mouth watering (or stomach churning) chapters within a day or two.

Sadly it’s all down hill from there.

I get lost in the dark, dangerous, deathly boring swamp that is the middle of my story. It took me awhile to realise this, but it’s usually because I’m unsure of the ending I’m writing towards. Initially I tried writing the last chapter first, but I found that I didn’t know any of the characters involved in the finale, and it was hard to care about what was happening to them. Some people get around this by frenetically planning their books down to the last detail, but that was never really my way of writing (although I do a lot more planning now than I have ever done before).

So, what to do?

I now write the first two or three chapters of a given story, then I write the final conflict. I don’t necessarily write the last chapter, just the last conflict.  That way I already know my protagonist enough to care about how that last scene goes down. The final battle also reveals things about my antagonists that I can use when I go back and write from the end of chapter two.

Once you have your final conflict chapter, go back over it and make notes about the ways the characters have changed  since you started. Of course  all of this is for your first draft, but it’s a useful tool to give your story better structure  without restricting yourself to a rigid plan.

Category: advice

Comments

One Response to “One, Two… Thirty?”

  1. CKHBNo Gravatar
    October 31st, 2009 @ 1:05 am

    I do this, too! But then I have trouble with my middles…

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