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Writing Isn't As Easy As It Looks
Aug. 6th, 2012 11:14 amDon't get me wrong - writing is much easier than, say, ditch-digging, but that doesn't mean it's easy. For me, a big problem to overcome is where to begin the story.
You see, I write novels in chronological order, starting at Chapter 1. So, I kind of need to know where "chapter 1" is. Having said that, in two of my three books, I've gone back and moved / added stuff before chapter 1. I guess to make a long story short, it's a mental tic more than an absolute. At any rate, yesterday I decided where to start Gunmaker. I started it with the first entry of an "offline" journal written by the titular gun-maker. The opening line is:
I need to make a gun, because I have to kill a man.
(It does set the stage for what follows.)
My next problem was point of view. I swore, after cursing the limitations of first-person, that I would not use that POV again. But, in this book, I found the need to talk directly to the reader. First-person journal entries seem (so far) to fill the bill.
My last problem in this work is moral compass. In my previous books, morality was pretty clear. I had bad guys, namely pirates, and everybody else. The "everybody else" might fudge their taxes and smoke a little weed on the weekend, but they were generally decent folks just trying to live their lives.
Not so on this book. I've decided that my gunmaker, even though he's a protagonist, isn't entirely right in his decision. I've also decided that the people he's shooting aren't entirely wrong in their actions either. In short, moral ambiguity, something I've not done before and don't know if I can sell, either literally to an editor or metaphorically to a reader. But then worrying about selling stuff has never been high on my list of writing goals.
You see, I write novels in chronological order, starting at Chapter 1. So, I kind of need to know where "chapter 1" is. Having said that, in two of my three books, I've gone back and moved / added stuff before chapter 1. I guess to make a long story short, it's a mental tic more than an absolute. At any rate, yesterday I decided where to start Gunmaker. I started it with the first entry of an "offline" journal written by the titular gun-maker. The opening line is:
I need to make a gun, because I have to kill a man.
(It does set the stage for what follows.)
My next problem was point of view. I swore, after cursing the limitations of first-person, that I would not use that POV again. But, in this book, I found the need to talk directly to the reader. First-person journal entries seem (so far) to fill the bill.
My last problem in this work is moral compass. In my previous books, morality was pretty clear. I had bad guys, namely pirates, and everybody else. The "everybody else" might fudge their taxes and smoke a little weed on the weekend, but they were generally decent folks just trying to live their lives.
Not so on this book. I've decided that my gunmaker, even though he's a protagonist, isn't entirely right in his decision. I've also decided that the people he's shooting aren't entirely wrong in their actions either. In short, moral ambiguity, something I've not done before and don't know if I can sell, either literally to an editor or metaphorically to a reader. But then worrying about selling stuff has never been high on my list of writing goals.
