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Wednesday, September 4, 2013

It Starts...Again

Does anyone else hear Timon from The Lion King when you read "it starts?"

Last night I started Dangling Justice. Again. No, I didn't start over, although I did a quick read-through of the first 50 pages to correct a few issues I noticed the last time I read through the first 50 pages.

This story is potentially full of cheats. The current scene is one of them. If I pull it off, disbelief will remain suspended and my readers will remain happy. If I fail miserably, readers will delete the book and never talk to me again.

I can probably live with it either way. I might actually prefer the latter because it lessens the pressure.

When this story first fired in my imagination, the ending was absolutely deus ex machina. I mean, God got them into it; He would have to get them out of it, too. It worked for Lewis, right? The children can't possibly get out of Narnia on their own.

That ending no longer makes me happy. While outlining with the help of Structuring Your Novel, I brainstormed other possible solutions and found one slightly less divine. Not much less, mind you, but a little. We'll see.

The outline, rudimentary as it is, helps. I felt the difference in the new bits I added last night. Instead of dialogue and action meandering across the white space, character interaction aimed at something: the end. The end is currently out of sight over a mountain, but it's there, waiting to be found.

Every start must have an end, after all. That's the whole point.

Happy Wednesday, dear readers. May you start and end well today.

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