{"id":155,"date":"2013-11-05T11:00:00","date_gmt":"2013-11-05T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pelicanbookgroup.com\/blog\/blog\/2013\/11\/05\/tactical-tuesday-advice-for-self-editing-8\/"},"modified":"2015-11-25T12:22:16","modified_gmt":"2015-11-25T19:22:16","slug":"tactical-tuesday-advice-for-self-editing-8","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pelicanbookgroup.com\/blog\/tactical-tuesday-advice-for-self-editing-8\/","title":{"rendered":"Tactical Tuesday: Advice for Self-Editing"},"content":{"rendered":"
\nGreat
\nbeginnings are not written by accident. Authors give much thought before
\ncrafting that all-important first scene. Some spend hours on the first line.<\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n
\nA novel
\ndoesn\u2019t have to start with an Indiana Jones type opener\u2014you know, Indie in the
\njungle facing dangers in order to return with the artifact, being chased by a
\nboulder and running into natives with spears, but a novel does need to use the Indiana Jones technique.<\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n
\nA great
\nopener is one that causes the reader to ask, \u201cWhy?\u201d \u201cHow?\u201d and \u201cWhat in the
\nworld?\u201d<\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n
\nCertain
\nscenarios have been said to be the kiss of death for authors. For instances, we\u2019re
\ntold that an author should never open a story with weather. Well,
\nif the opening is simply someone looking out the window at a cloudless day, the
\nauthor would be smart to back away and think again.<\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n
\nNow, if
\nthe character lives on a farm in Kansas, and the opening scene involves a
\ngathering of dark, malicious-looking clouds, and one of those clouds just happens
\nto drop a funnel from the sky, and if that character stands in the window and
\nwatches the funnel cut a path through his corn field and toward the house, I
\nthink the author has started with a great scene.<\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n
\nAlso,
\nauthors are told never to start a story with a dream. I pretty much agree with
\nthis rule. Why? Because a dream is like an internal thought. A dream has the
\nreader in the psyche of a character the reader hasn\u2019t met. Coming out of the dream
\nwill jar the reader.<\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n
\nYet, if
\nI were to write a story about a man who is dreaming about his life and who
\nawakens to find himself the savior of a future world…Oops, already been done,
\nbut I have to wonder if any editor ever picked up that story and said, \u201cOh, no,
\nanother novel starting with a dream\u201d before the work got into the hands of an
\nastute editor.<\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n
\nThe
\nnext scenario is one that every author should note as something to avoid.
\nNever, ever, ever open the story with back story. If the information contained
\nin the back story is so important that it cannot be layered into the plot in
\nsmall quantities and in a way that the reader will not recognize it as back
\nstory, it is possible that the story has been started in the wrong place.<\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n
\nLikewise,
\ninformation dumps must be avoided at all costs. They\u2019re easy to spot. They start
\nout by telling the reader everything they need to know about the character,
\ntheir location, their background, etc. The emphasis is on \u201ctelling.\u201d Information
\nshould unfold in such a way that the reader does not feel \u201cdumped upon.\u201d<\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n
\nReaders
\nshould not have to meander through pleasantries about the weather, a dream that
\nmeans nothing to them, or through back story and information that does nothing
\nbut stop the story cold.<\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n
\nThere is a reason that the Adventures of Indiana Jones
\nall start with Indiana in a precarious situation, and it demonstrates a very
\nvaluable technique when it comes to opening scenes. All novels should start in
\na place called \u201cin media res.\u201d This means no matter the genre being written,
\nwhen readers open up to the first page of a novel, they should find themselves
\nin the middle of the action.<\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

\nHappy
\nediting.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Great beginnings are not written by accident. Authors give much thought before crafting that all-important first scene. Some spend hours on the first line. A novel doesn\u2019t have to start with an Indiana Jones type opener\u2014you know, Indie in the jungle facing dangers in order to return with the artifact, being chased by a boulder […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[504],"tags":[79,67,21,18,133,134],"class_list":["post-155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editing-writing-advice","tag-back-story","tag-editing","tag-editing-advice","tag-editing-tips","tag-information-dumps","tag-opening-scenes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pelicanbookgroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pelicanbookgroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pelicanbookgroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pelicanbookgroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pelicanbookgroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=155"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pelicanbookgroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pelicanbookgroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pelicanbookgroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pelicanbookgroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}