Meredith Mansfield, Author

First, a little status.  I have cut 1000 words from THE SHAMAN’S CURSE and 2000 words from THE IGNORED PROPHECY.  And that was just yesterday.

You have to get the beginnings right.  Otherwise, nobody’s going to read the golden prose in the middle, the fantastic climax, or the awe-inspiring ending.  (Well, we hope the middle, climax, and ending are all those things, any way.)

I’m thinking about this today because I had the good luck to have someone read the first few new chapters of DREAMER’S ROSE before I got too far into it.  The good news is: it was interesting enough to read on.  The bad news is: the critiquer thought a side character was the protagonist and that the real protagonist was shallow.

Diagnosis:  I was rushing.  I was trying so hard to get to what I saw as the inciting incident quickly, that I was just skipping over a lot of territory.  So now I’m going back over those early chapters, expanding where appropriate, and improving my protagonist’s motivation for what he does.

Discussing the critique a little gave me the insight to realize that what I was seeing as the inciting incident was really part of the try/fail cycle (a failure).  The real life-altering event occurs much earlier.  I don’t have to rush and the story will be so much better for it.

I’m so fortunate to have found this out early.  You don’t want to be trying to build a 100,000 word edifice on quicksand.