“If you substitute ‘Oh sugar!’ for ‘Oh shit!’ because you’re thinking about the Legion of Decency, you are breaking the unspoken contract that exists between writer and reader- you promise to express the truth of how people act and talk through the medium of a made-up story” ~Stephen King
Wednesday, December 13, 2017
First Chapters
First chapters are my favorite things to write. They burst out of you,
helped by that initial surge of excited adrenaline that comes with every
new story idea that has enough substance to stick around in the old
noggin and not be forgotten with the shopping list. First chapters are
where decisions are made: Is there a book here? Can I let this thing run
itself out for four or five hundred pages? Does it have a heart beating
in its chest? Those answers are never really clear, to be honest. You
can only get a better sense of what's going on by writing a first
chapter, meeting some characters, and deciding whether or not their
lives are interesting enough to follow for upwards of a year. I've said
this before, and I'll say it again: the best stories are not created;
they are discovered. My job is not to make these people do things, but
rather to hang out with them and be there when the shit goes down. And
the shit almost ALWAYS goes down. If it doesn't--or if it doesn't seem
like it's going to--then I bail after the first chapter. Because if I
don't, when that initial excitement fades (and it always does), then I
won't be able to care enough to write down what happens... or, if I do, I
won't write it down the way it deserves and the story will be flat.
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Love your books, Christopher! This blog post also resonates with me because I've always wondered if and at what point a story turns into a book for writers. I wish I had that type of imagination, but for you to share yours with your readers, like me, is very much appreciated
ReplyDeleteJaye