Rewriting Chapter One

[skip.knox]

We all know about Chapter One, that miserable child whose hair we are forever combing, whose shoes ever need polishing, whom we fuss over and fuss over until it wails that it will miss the bus. I'm writing a Chapter One right now.

Rewriting, actually, and therein lies ... whatever it is that lies therein. Maybe an insight.

I did Camp Nano last April. Got about 40,000 words of a novel out. Enough that I could see my way from beginning to end. Now I'm working back through, turning sketches and scenes and notes into a bona fide first draft.

And I'm noticing something. The first chapter is easier this time around. Sure, it may be no more than experience, but this feels more like a quantum jump, however atomic its scale, and I believe it's because of Nano. Hah! Atomic. Nano. Get it? Oops, fantasy forum, not SF.

Because I can see the shape of the novel--not merely as a map but because I've actually driven it once--then I have a better idea of what I need Chapter One to do. It can be little things, like knowing that I develop a secondary character in the next chapter so I can skimp a little here. Or, that wizard who was sort of ambiguous in the original version is now definitely a villain pretending to be a friend, so I can do things like make the mood of the setting not match the tone of his voice, or introduce some tic that I'll use later. I also know he moves off stage after Chapter Ones, for quite a while, so I need to make him memorable enough that references to him reverberate.

It strikes me that I could have known none of this if I tried to "polish" Chapter One before going to Chapter Two. I could not edit as I go because I wouldn't really know where I was going. I could know I'm going to New York, but unless I know if I'm going by airplane or jet ski, I won't know how to pack.

I doubt I shall do another Nano, but I do think for my next novel I'll try the same approach: do a month of outlining and research and character development, followed by a month of writing. If that becomes five weeks, that's fine, so long as I get to a genuine conclusion. Put it aside, then come back and do the "real" writing. I think my future Chapter Ones will thank me.

 

[Svrtnsse]

This makes a lot of sense.

I was musing on this earlier today, toying around with writing the first sentences for some of my short stories I'm laying out. Sure, experience probably helps, but knowing what's required of the first chapter is likely to make it a lot easier to write. Things will make more sense, feel more solid, and you'll set up the reader's expectations for what's to come better.

 

[Heliotrope]

Yes! I came to this realization some ago and now understand that it is virtually pointless to have anyone read any of my chapters until I have completed at least the first draft.

Before then too much is still up in the air. Nothing irks me more than when I have a crit partner read an early draft (before I even know where I'm going) to let me know if the hook is big enough, or the voice is compelling enough, or the character is relatable, and they say things like "Oh, well your use of comma splice is distracting." No! That's not what I'm asking! I'm asking for big picture help! For story structure help. Because guaranteed, two chapters from nowI'm going to realize I should have put something further up at the beginning and it's all going to shift around.

Now I just don't bother sending anyone anything until I think I'm done.

 

[FifthView]

It strikes me that I could have known none of this if I tried to "polish" Chapter One before going to Chapter Two. I could not edit as I go because I wouldn't really know where I was going.

Yeah, my current WIP opens with my MC waking, trying to remember a dream he just had. He slips back into the dream before waking again. So I have a 2-paragraph dream that I'm using as foreshadowing—it basically "shows" a scene from much later in the book, but with two characters and setting replaced by dream imagery, everything dreamlike and unclear to the MC—and I know that it needs rewriting to make it sharper, but I'm not even sure I'm going to keep it. It might be cut to a single line or two. I'm not 100% sure of the pacing I want there and for the first chapter as a whole, nor even whether I want to reveal aspects of the character (his reaction to the oddness of the dream) so early, etc. So I'm not going to bother reworking that until I've written more and have a better understanding of what I need there.

I'm mostly discovery writing this anyway, so I need to discover more first.

Brandon Sanderson has said he ends up throwing away most of the first draft first chapters he writes, anyway.

 

[RedAngel]

I may not have gotten as far as you op in completing or nearly completing a novel. But like you I am revisiting my work with fresh eyes and a deeper insight into understanding what it was that I was trying to convey. Which has helped to strengthen the holes I have found and to put a new coat of paint over the walls. I find it refreshing to come at my old writing with a new perspective and a direction.

I will say though that it has presented new dilemas in the things I have changed though. On one hand the new paint and polish needed to happen but also I feel that it could lead to deviation later in the story even though I feel that it was necessary. After doing research it has added layers of dimension and feeling that seemed to be missing in my previous writing that at the time I had that sneaking suspicion was lacking from my work but could not put my finger on. Either way it is taking me into uncharted waters that is more exciting then before and I find writing more pleasant this time around.

It has a sense of deja vu in which I know what is coming but this time I can have my characters act in much more organic manners. As I read my previous writings it seemed like it was being approached as a super hero type approach rather than what I intended. Not to mention my own understanding of the rules and guidlines of my fantasy world have evolved since then as well so it is nice to refine those concepts at the same time.

I can't wait to see where it takes me this time around.

 

[Penpilot]

Yep. No use fussing about things until you're sure it's worth fussing about.

 

[psychotick]

Hi,

For me my bug bear with first chapters is that I write epic fantasy and sci fi. It doesn't matter so much for urban fantasy. And that means I need world building early on. And my ed always picks me up on it, saying it robs fromthe action - which it does. And because of that I end up writing prologues!

Cheers, Greg.

 

[DragonOfTheAerie]

What Chapter One must be like all depends on what sort of story as a whole you are writing. There is really no way to know that in a precise way without first writing the story. That's why it's so likely that the correct place to begin will come much later.

I find I like focusing on a specific moment or feeling someplace toward the beginning and jumping in headlong from there. Just something to immediately connect me to the story. It's like I just need to tear into the story myself, breach its surface and get inside, at whatever place, before I can work on the right place to enter.

 

[Penpilot]

I was just thinking. This is kind of like when people read a book or see a movie and point out all the flaws and rough patches and say it would have been better if the writer had done X instead of Y.

A lot of people do this and some can do it quite well, but ask those same people to come up with something from scratch--and I speak from personal experience on this--and it becomes an infinitely more difficult thing to do.

It's always easier to fix things that have a have a shape/structure to them. Except in this instance that story is your own instead of someone else's.

 

[Aurora]

An interesting take. Thanks for sharing. Chapter ones are my nemesis. I've stopped bothering with them while drafting and just go back to polish when I'm getting close to the end. If I polish and polish and polish then I won't finish the book.

 

[Incanus]

For my WIP, I didn't even look back at a single word of chapter 1 until after I reached the end of the first draft of the whole thing. I knew full well I wasn't going to use much of it, so I just rushed through.

When I went back to it, I ended up doing four rewrites of the first 9-10 chapters (the number of chapters changed during this) which constitute Part 1 of the novel. Though it was a pain, I'm glad I did it this way. I recently got a thumbs up for chapter 1 by a hard-to-please critique partner.

While Part 1 isn't exactly stellar, it's in good enough shape now that I've moved on to Part 2 (at long last).

 

[Demesnedenoir]

Yeah, first draft Chapter Ones tend to be a bit like Mr. Irrelevant in the NFL draft, except they often come first, heh heh. My original chapter one is now chapter 5. It's essence remained relatively stable, but it went through many versions.