Floundering Fiction
I read an interesting post today on another authors blog.
She comments that her novel is floundering and I have to admit I understand her feelings. I am currently on my third start of the same novel. Each draft is completely different from the one before it yet tells the same basic story.
The problem I think is that I wasn’t sure where I was going with it at first. I had an idea, I knew where I wanted to end up but I had no clue how exactly I wanted to get there.
So I sat and worked with my Jello Slime for a while, trying to reach in and pull out the solid bits and put them together into a pattern. It was messy work.
However, I think I ended up with some good ideas. I know now which characters need to tell the story. I know now where they will start and where they want to end up. I know now where the story wants to end. I know what it needs to cover in the interim between when it starts and when it ends.
I think that my third start will be the one I stick with. It is the one I started after my afternoon with the Jello slime and I think it is significantly better then the others.
I guess I will see what my critic group says about the first chapter.
Now all I have to do is finish a draft of this novel. ANY draft I just want a complete draft.