Too Many Cooks...Yada, Yada

Continuing with yesterday’s lame analogy, too much attention to craft can really mess with your head.

Armed with tools gained at the plotting workshop, I made a stab at writing a new opening for Stealing Amy last night. I did this for several reasons:

1. Judging the Golden Heart and The Daphne contests (my first foray into the judging arena) gave me a new perspective on the lives of editors and agents. Mainly, I learned that “well-written” ain’t gonna cut it. Because between the two contests, I probably sampled 16 different manuscripts, and guess what? They were all pretty damned good! In fact, only one was a genuine clunker. And yet, none of the entries I judged even made it to the finals.

Ouch. There’s a lot of great competition out there. You have to stand out from the pack. It’s not enough to have a great premise, compelling characters, a well-described setting, and error-free prose. Somehow, you have to dazzle.

2. The plotting workshop reminded me of the Donald Maass mantra…what could make the situation facing my character worse?

Okay, so I’d already rewritten the first chapter of Stealing Amy once. The original version opened with Amy discovering (by viewing her credit card statement online) that her identity thief is in Mexico, living high off the hog. Bam! She takes off on the chase.

Somewhere along the line (probably when the Donald Maass workbook arrived) I realized I hadn’t taken it far enough. So I wrote a new scene for which the opening line is: “You’re under arrest.”

Hm. Having my heroine mistakenly arrested in front of her next door neighbor starts the book off with a much better bang, but could I make things even worse?

Along came the plotting workshop.

I’d forgotten an article I read a long time ago on Stephanie Bond’s website (I’d insert the address here, but my work computer doesn’t seem to do that very well—maybe later, when I get home). Anyway, the plotting lady jogged my memory…it’s called the list of twenty. (Anyone familiar?) In a nutshell, the theory is that when you force yourself to list twenty options, by the time you get to fifteen, creativity starts to kick in. So, that’s what I did. Stephanie's site here--click on item 38

Around option thirteen, I started getting excited. Spent the next two hours writing a new 5-page opening which puts Amy at a la-de-da fundraiser attended by her mother and all the bigwigs in town. In the first sentence, we discover her car’s being towed, then on page two the credit card her mother’s borrowed from Amy’s purse doesn’t go through, and we culminate with her getting arrested in front of the Mayor, the head of the fundraiser, and of course, Mom.

Better?

Maybe.

I wasn’t that thrilled when I read it over at the end of the night because something seemed to be missing. Today, I think I realize what it is.

We (the reader) don’t care about Amy yet. Sure, we can empathize with her plight, but we don’t know anything about her. Maybe she’s a whiny bitch who deserves a crappy day.

So, I guess that’s tonight’s task…how to simultaneously jump into the action while making Amy sympathetic without slowing down the pace.

Hm. I predict another list of twenty.