holding back
My strategy on beginnings vs middles is like this:
(and a word of caution here, it doesn’t give for the best structure or story arc or whatever, but it does make writing interesting throughout the novel)
on beginnings, I hold back as much as I can, giving the minimum of what I know to readers and my characters. I lure them in, I let them reveal themselves in what they think are normal, everyday situations when they’re really not; I listen to their voices, I let them tell who they are, I give them a last-moment opportunity to become something more than they were scheduled for me.
Then, when things get a bit boring, I hurl everything I remember I had on them, I bomb them with information, disasters, problems, horrible dreams, and all-the-things-I-thought-sequel-should-cover. I believe firmly that you never can run out of disasters, not when you get in the spree. That’s the middles.
Oh, and then there’s endings when I carefully pick up the threads and tie them, careful as not to mess them up by brutality OR by being too respectful of the novel world as it is now.
But I have a long time till the ending.
