I've been sitting here wondering just how much of Chapters 1-3 I'm going to be murdering come the second draft, (answer, I fear, plenty of all of them). Then I found this in the archives of the ever-wonderful Miss Snark:

I'm not sure why this is but writers have a hard time jumping right in to the action. There's always some sort of set up like describing a sunset, or their situation or what they're looking at out the window. Out! Out! However, that writing is not wasted even if it does go in the burgeoning trash can. Everything you write whether you use it or not is part of the process of becoming a good or better writer. It's the equivalent of batting practice. Even the guys batting .400 (damn Yankees!) take batting practice before a game. You should hear a soprana warming up to sing Wagner! Those twelve pages are batting practice. Now step up to the plate and SWING!

Of which wise words, these are - or ought to be - the mantra of the aspiring writer:

Everything you write whether you use it or not is part of the process of becoming a good or better writer.

Emma

I like that mantra, Emma, and do apply it when looking back at my last novel...yet I find it hard with regards to a work-in-progress.

I can now - on a good day - comfortably write off my first novel, look upon it as a learning curve and congratulate myself on how much my writing has improved.

However, if I read back over the pages of my current project, I find it very difficult to do much more than tweak it. I suspect this will be one of the most important lessons I learn as a writer...I have to be prepared to take a long hard look at what I am writing NOW and accept that, in the long run, however good I think it is, ultimately it may just be more batting practice.

Sammy

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As regards to setting the scene before the action, find if I jump in with the action too soon, I'll set the scene afterwards and then be lynched for too much backstory!

Emma
The advice about action/drama at the start has really hit me between the eyes. Thanks for that. It may be obvious in some ways, but it has still really got me thinking!

Caroling, me too, which was why I posted it. I was very interested that what I thought was one of my weaknesses is obviously something many writers struggle with.

Off to excise all that looking out of windows at the rain and wondering about the past...

Though yes, Sammy, it does leave you with the back-story problem. Can you sneak it in in bits, instead of a slab? Certainly, it's easier to see where to put it in after you've written a fair bit, though you have to keep track carefully of what the reader's been told when.

Emma

I suspect this will be one of the most important lessons I learn as a writer...I have to be prepared to take a long hard look at what I am writing NOW and accept that, in the long run, however good I think it is, ultimately it may just be more batting practice.

I think it's true, but also that, by definition, you can't always tell NOW what's batting practice and what's the game, so you have to write it, and go back. You may be able to tell tomorrow, or maybe not till you've finished the first draft. So it's just as well you can mutter 'nothing's wasted'. I know of so many writers who get stuck - at the blank page stage, or later - because they feel everything has to be right, and of course so often it isn't. Far more liberating to know that it doesn't matter if it isn't - well, not yet, anyway - and get scribbling.

Emma

Yes, there is a ghastly compulsion to inflict the back-story on the reader right up-front where it risks switching him/her off before reaching the meat. You're right to recommend re-distribution elsewhere in separated bits. I've recently done this with a dangerously large up-front chunk and found that I was able to shed a surprising amount of it when re-distributing.

Probably the reason why we tend to worry about plunging into the action is that we fear that the reader will not will not be on our wavelength and will not understand it in exactly the way we want them to, unless we ease them in with the back-story and situation. Maybe we should tell ourselves that it doesn't matter if the reader sees the content in exactly the same way as we do. The crucial thing is that they see it in such a way (and quickly enough) to be impelled to continue.

The batting practice analogy is a good one provided we are looking critically at the long sections of drivel and understanding what has made them so. In any case, there's always the possibility of the occasional nugget hidden amongst it!

Chris

I think it's often not drivel, just too much. I also find myself thinking of it as 'throat clearing' - necessary for us but not for the reader.

And a propos back story, here's a bit from the current Miss Snark, actually talking about dialogue, but the principle applies to non-dialogue (is there a proper word for that?) too:

I tend to like dialogue more than exposition for moving a story along right up until "As you know Bob". AYKB (which comes from the estimable TNH at Making Light, I think) is exposition badly disguised as dialogue. "As you know Miss Snark, a literary agent is someone who represents an author to sell manuscripts to publishers, and they earn 15% commission". You can disguise it as "holy moly Miss Snark, you're only going to get paid IF you sell this? What kind of socialist enterprise are you running over there at Snark Central anyway??" if you're clever.

Emma

Everything you write whether you use it or not is part of the process of becoming a good or better writer.

Couldn't agree more!

I was reading Boswell's London Journal the other day, and underlined an interesting bit. Boswell was pondering over something a friend of his had said, about taking more pains on writing his journal, and wrote:

Style is to sentiment what dress is to the person. The effects of both are very great, and both are acquired and improved by habit. When once we are used to it, it is as easy to dress neatly as like a sloven; the same way, custom makes us write in a correct style as easily as in a careless, inaccurate one.

I also found this page that should be of interest to anybody who enjoys Julie Orringer's writing, and probably to others as well:

http://www.randomhouse.com/knopf/authors/orringer/

I always feel vaguely ashamed about my notes and ur-first-drafts because they're so chaotic and often silly, something like 'J. takes a sip of water... hands shaking... here sthg about the wife... or end of Chapt. 3???'... I sometimes ask myself, 'If I were to die now and other people read these notes, wouldn't they wonder why I've spent so much time and effort on something like this? And why on earth is it so important that J. take a sip of water, anyway!?' It's reassuring to see that also other writers -- perhaps even all writers? -- go through a similar process and that even the finest prose begins its life as a shapeless lump of words and ideas. Of course one understands that no story springs from the brain as already polished and gorgeous, but it's nice to see concrete proof of this, anyway!

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I'm not sure why this is but writers have a hard time jumping right in to the action. There's always some sort of set up like describing a sunset, or their situation or what they're looking at out the window. Out! Out!

I'm not sure I agree with this entirely, though. Waffle is waffle, no doubt about that, but would, say, The Heart of the Matter be the same without that sweltering atmosphere that's established right from the start? And yet I'm hard pressed to think of a writer more succinct than Graham Greene.

I have puzzled over the way a piece just written feels dazzlingly perfect, only to look hackneyed, heavy or trite a day later. And then, with a few adjustments, how it can look good again, only to collapse into a shambles in the eye of the next day's perusal. Then I work it over once more and leave it a week and it looks -wow- ok. Then, only a couple of hours later, it's rubbish again! Eventually, it reads well enough, but... but... there's something missing: the heart's gone out of it, the verve and the zip it had when it sat on the brim of my brain all those days ago and first spilled onto the page is gone... And so another revision, with reference to the 1st draft, and another and another etc etc. and so it goes on...

If this is batting practice I wonder if I'm getting tangled up in the nets.

Pete

J. takes a sip of water...'

Hope J's sip of water either illustrates the theme, moves the plot along or gives us an insight into J's character (preferably all 3)- ha

Feel better having read this thread- good to know nothing's wasted- even that spidery scribbled post-it.

I'm not sure I agree with this entirely, though. Waffle is waffle, no doubt about that, but would, say, The Heart of the Matter be the same without that sweltering atmosphere that's established right from the start? And yet I'm hard pressed to think of a writer more succinct than Graham Greene.

I think if you do it as well as he does, then it isn't waffle. Greene's opening is so brilliantly written that we are completely absorbed. For me one of the hallmarks of really good writing is that the more you look at it, the more it's doing - just as the hallmark of a really good book is that you can read it several times, and see more each time. The problem with what Miss Snark's talking about is that - for whatever reason - she isn't absorbed, presumably because those twelve pages aren't doing enough else, apart from setting the scene.

Emma

Thanks for the words of wisdom, Emma. So those fifty odd novel openings I've done aren't all in vain...

I always feel vaguely ashamed about my notes and ur-first-drafts because they're so chaotic and often silly,

Keep them safe, and in the fullness of time you'll be able to make a mint selling them to some obscure university in the USA with a vast budget and a burning desire to found the next Great Literary Archive... The more chaotic and apparently silly, the more PhD students you'll be keeping in business.

Emma

The more chaotic and apparently silly, the more PhD students you'll be keeping in business

-reminds me of The Paper Men, the guy going through the writer's bin like a badger.

Darren, no, not in vain at all.

Apparently, when Hemingway was asked how to become a writer he said, 'Write a million words'. At a very rough count, I've just reached it... how's anyone else doing?

Emma


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Maybe we should start a thread about it, parallel to Waxy's Rejection Pledge