We left off in An Example of the Experiments, 2 – Fains I with the promise of sharing the original Fains I opening and the rewrite making use of multiple storycrafting techniques.
I shared the original first ~900 words in An Example of the Experiments, 3 – Fains I and here I share the rewrite, now the first chapter in a work-in-progrWe left off in An Example of the Experiments, 2 – Fains I with the promise of sharing the original Fains I opening and the rewrite making use of multiple storycrafting techniques.
I shared the original first ~900 words in An Example of the Experiments, 3 – Fains I and here I share the rewrite, now the first chapter in a work-in-progress, the Fains I – A John Chance Mystery novel.
My first question is, as a reader, does this appeal more to you than the original version? If yes, because…? If not, because…? Figure out what makes it better or worse and you’ll have some excellent handles on your own crafting.
Now to analyze…
First thing, what happened to Tim and his family?
Remember my writing “I realized the rewritten opening sucked because I didn’t know enough about the characters to really care about them. The shift from teenager going to the prom to elderly man on his deathbed drove the story in the correct direction and not enough.” in An Example of the Experiments, 2 – Fains I?
I was correct that the story had an older cast of characters (demonstrated in the rewrite above).
I also wrote “This brings us back to An Example of the Experiments – Fains I’s First Question: Who Owns the Story?”
As written earlier, the core piece – someone dies and Tim’s involved – was solid enough to carry the story, but nothing I came up with made Tim interesting enough to me to write about him and, as noted previously, readers will only be interested in your characters if you’re interested in you’re characters.
How to make “Tim” more interesting to me? Hmm…
The original story had a car accident resulting in a death. Too random. Yeah, there could be guilt and an accident is an accident is an accident, and accidents happen.
Give Tim
- a reason to murder someone and
- make him remorseless about the murder because
- he feels justified in the killing.
Okay, psychosociopathic youngsters are interesting but can be limiting because a youth doesn’t have the life experience to have those attitudes fully realized, so an older “Tim” who feels justified and has no guilt.
Gosh golly gee. Tim’s becoming quite three-dimensional here. He’s interesting.
What if the older Tim had committed several murders, believed all of them justified and remains remorseless and guilt free?
This Tim’s obviously got a) a history and b) some issues.
And the best part is such psychosociopaths are usually pretty good at hiding who they are from public view.
Sometimes you can let the reader know more about a situation than the characters know about this situation.
Alfred Hitchcock gave a great example of creating audience interest, empathy, and tension: Have two people eating lunch or having a drink at a picnic table or a an outdoor cafe. Now put a ticking bomb under the table and make sure the audience sees it and knows what it is.
Doesn’t matter if the audience likes or dislikes the people at the table, they’re interested in what happens.
So there’s a psychosociopath loose, no one knows it, and the reader learns it. Great! Excellent.
But don’t tell the reader everything at once. Foreshadow. Hint. Mislead and misdirect, all of which now stars with the novel’s A John Chance Mystery subtitle (Search – The First John Chance Mystery has already signalled regular readers more John Chance novels are coming and new readers Fains I is part of a series).
Ooo. This is getting better already. We’re starting to have a story.
The last part mentioned previously was have an interesting person in an interesting place doing an interesting thing and “Give the reader an interesting person in an interesting place doing an interesting thing. If you only give one, it’s got to be incredibly strong. Two is good, three is dynamite.” along with Relatability and the four basic ways people relate to things:
- they’re familiar with a place (Setting)
- they’re familiar with what’s happening (Plot)
- they’re familiar with the people involved (Character)
- they’re familiar with what’s being said (Language)
and remember to throw in And add in what makes a great opening: conflict, tension, oddness, …?
Throw all this in the pot, let simmer, stir occasionally, season to taste, and we get (I hope) something closer to what’s the story, a first pass of which is shown above. A detailed (pretty much line-by-line) analysis is below:
All Fains I posts.
