When I mentioned to my husband that I was revising my opening scene, he said that since I now know how to improve it, my work will just flow.
In fact, he’s wrong. (Sorry dear!) That was precisely my problem before–I wrote in the style I’d been writing in for the past 20 years. The “info dump” and vague detail way. So any writing that feels natural, that’s “flowing”, I now recognize isn’t quite right.
It’s hard to break old habits! Now I have to carefully analyze every thought and phrase I put onto the page instead of just letting the “sense” of how it all fits together rule the day.
Here’s what I realized:
I always imagined a story had a narrator (true) who was telling you what happened (false). I pictured the protagonist sitting in front of me with a cup of coffee/glass of wine (you know, depending on his or her age) explaining what had gone on in his or her life before.
Jennie wants me to do the opposite–it’s not someone chatting to me, the reader, over drinks; it’s me, the reader, living those moments at the same time as the protagonist. When Jennie kept telling me to get inside Lyra’s head, I believed I was doing just that–I was telling the reader Lyra’s perspective on the events. But I was still having Lyra narrate the story. I’m still the reader sitting across from her, listening. I’m not actually living the thoughts as Lyra lives them. In other words, if Lyra wouldn’t say those lines to herself, in her own mind, then I as the writer can’t use them either.
Turns out that’s more of a challenge. How do I get across all that backstory to the reader when Lyra knows it so well? How do I explain who her sister is and when she died and how when Lyra already knows all those answers?
I don’t have the answers, but I think once I crack that nut then finally, finally, my story will flow.
(Fingers crossed.)