posted
I am not sure whether to post this here or in Open Discussions, so I opened in both. *sheepish grin* I really want advice. So, here is my true dilema. I am working on a YA fantasy novel, and I am about 100 pages(21,000 words) in, and I am pretty pleased with it. It is mainly a character piece, with a love story. Not a milieu story. To describe what is written so far, in brief, the MC in my story posesses a magical gift, but he doesn't know about it yet. He doesn't think he is magic, barely believes it exists. Then, leaders of the magical realm find him and tell him all about it. So, for these first 100 pages in my story, I have been trying to weave in the explainations of his gift, and the rules of magic in this world. I have been trying to do it through dialogue, and spread out in several different scenes, but it still reads kinda like an info dump. The scenes have been REALLY unpleasant to write. And then *sigh* four days ago I had the unwelcomed epiphany that the MC should know he is magic and know about the gift from the beginning. Scrap all the lengthy explanation. Trouble is, this would mean starting ALL OVER AGAIN. From scratch. I shudder at the very thought.
I need advice. What should I do? Are several scenes (3-5 pages long) filled with info dump conversations such a bad thing? Do you think explanations of the magical rules need to be explained carefully? Am I just getting impaitent and need to ride them out? Or, would such scenes only clutter a story that is not a milieu story? Help me. I really REALLY don't want to flush 100 pages (that I have been working on since April) down the tubes. BUT, I will if it will make the story stronger.
posted
If those 100 pages keep the story from selling, then what good does keeping them do? On the other hand, you may not be the best judge of what's good and what's bad. I do know this -- it is not enough for a reader that a story have interesting bits in it. It has be be interesting from page one and stay interesting to The End.
Posts: 557 | Registered: Jun 2007
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posted
F&F Novels is probably the best place for this....
From the sounds of it, if you wish to follow your ephipany, you have no other option but scrap everything.
You start off with a single premise - that your MC has magical ability but does not know it, and the first 100 pages are essentially him learning about his abilities. To change this key point is to utterly change the structure of the story to the point that probably very little of what you have written is salvagable. If these first 100 pages are all your MC learning, and you want to change it to him already knowing, then you basically need to skip another hundred or so pages into the future, and arrive at the point in your original idea where he knws everything already. If you do not wish to throw out these pages, then you need to stick with your original idea and ride it out. If you feel that you are cramming too much backstory in and that is why you want to cut out the whole learning thing, you've arrived at a second impasse - your MC might know all of the magical rules and regulations, but the reader still does not. Using an outsider is a relatively efficient way of explaining a foreign world to the reader - it worked for Tolkien, it worked for OSC, it'll work for you.
As for how much backstory to work in... presuming you stay the course. Does he need to learn everything about magic all at the very beginning? Take two fantasy books dealing with young kids learning about their powers - Harry Potter & The Philosopher's Stone, and Eragon.Harry learns about his magical heritage and the rules of magic such as they are over the course of most of the book. Do not feel compelled to push all of the backstory out to the reader at the very beginning of the book! In Eragon, he does 90% of the learning he's going to do in the first third of the book, and by the midpoint he is a master at whatever it was his powers were, and I was already getting bored with the history of the godforsaken land Paolini had created.
Long story short - keep your current story structure (regardless of how much it resembles Harry Potter) and try to spread the learning out more, work it into the plot more organically. If you need to go back after you've finished and rewrite the beginning, then that's something you'll have to do then, but I'd rather have a complete novel I'm not entirely satisfied with than the beginning of a novel that I'll never finish because I keep coming up with excuses to stop writing and start all over again.
posted
Sometimes you have to change course. I think you should go ahead and finish it, before doing anything like scrapping the first 100 pages. Even if that means totally changing course, and pretending the beginning is written differently so it will make sense.
I recently had to make that kind of a decision. The first 70 pages were backstory, though they had their own storyline. I've been slowly working through the rest of the book doing preliminary clean-up before reintroducing the information, though I actually need to fit most of it in another part of the story. (A weird occurance, actually necessitated by the storyline.)
It sounds to me like you should finish writing the story. It might organically resolve now you know...and you can't always force ideas of how to fix a story.
posted
Sounds like a premise with potential - the person with powers that he/she discovers over time - if it is done in an original way and/or combined with original ideas.
On the "to rewrite or not to rewrite" question, I would recommend trying to write it the new way even if you only get 10 pages down. That might be a good exercise in any case and would help get a feel for which is better, and which you enjoy writing.
posted
In the software industry we say that you should plan to throw the first version away, meaning that, if you try to do something that is complex and interesting enough to bother doing, you'll get it wrong because it's complex.
The second time around you build it correctly, with confidence, avoiding the mitsakes -- sorry, mistakes -- of the first version.
In my experience it's actually a pleasure to do this. It doesn't feel like doing it all again, because one does it differently and better, so it actually becomes a pleasure, especially since the second time around one (thinks one) knows what one is doing.
So I don't think the first version was wasted, it was just a detailed way of thinking the (back)story through. The second version, assuming you choose to write it, will be much better and perhaps a pleasure to write with the confidence of knowing the backstory intimately.
Hopefully helpful and encouraging, Pat
P.S. Of course the software industry rarely actually takes its own advice, preferring to deliver the buggy first version and then charge money for fixes. It even has the cheek to call them 'bugs' instead of what they really are: errors. Clever, that. Maddening, but clever. But that's another debate ... sorry, I've wandered off topic onto a hobby horse.
posted
Show us how HE learns it. If he learns of the powers by strange things happening, show us thesethings through his eyes. If he learns about his powers through verbal instruction, let us hear the instruction. If it is a combination of both -- and it probably is -- show us the what and the how when he learns it.
The rules of magic will make themselves apparent as his understanding of them solidifies.
[This message has been edited by InarticulateBabbler (edited August 09, 2007).]
posted
I'm not a YA author, so know little about the audience. However, I thought I'd pass on the advice I received from a friend of mine, who is an expert in early childhood education, and promoting literacy. We were discussing the Harry Potter books, and I mentioned that one of my criticisms was the fact that I felt the character development was weak for Voldemort.
She replied, "If you read the advice of the top YA authors, you'll find they all say the same thing. Kids who read YA books don't have the patience for character development. They want action. If you spend too much time developing character or backstory, you'll lose them."
Given that, I'd say your intuition may be leading you in the right direction if it's telling you to streamline the backstory.
posted
Personally I'd suggest you avoid the long bouts of explaining the way magic works. I think it would be wiser idea to use that time to engage the reader in the conflict of the story, make them securely hooked and then explain the vagaries of the magic system bit by bit as the story progresses. Sometimes it's a hard pill to swallow but your second version could be better than the first.
And don't toss out what you've written, you might find some use for it later.
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