Journey Of A Novel

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the beginning

A good start

Tanya V 10 March 2023

Chapter one is taking on a new shape. I’ve been pulling it apart, rearranging the narrative, deleting, deleting, deleting and writing new words. The beginning is no longer the beginning. Re-reading the last draft with feedback in hand I can now see where the story starts. It’s not at the beginning but soon after it. The start of the story within the novel is an awakening, or ‘the call to adventure’ as it is written the hero’s journey story formula.

It’s not so much a call in the case of my story, it’s more a motivating force in a new direction because of things beyond the protagonist’s control.

So the journey begins.

Changing the sequence of events for the start of the story in chapter one has created a flashback of sorts to establish the beginning, or perhaps more precisely, ‘the known world’. These changes have opened up the story to let the reader in rather than sitting on the sidelines of a once-upon-a-time type scenario.

At least this is what I’m doing my best to craft with words on a page.

The process for this has been to work my way through chapter one cutting and pasting to rework the narrative into the order needed to facilitate the new story-line. Along the way I have written in new parts to flesh out the story where it is needed, and I’ve colour highlighted areas that I think are still questionable, or need more, or could be shifted again.

I keep bingeing the task then stepping away to mull over where I’m at and what I’ve done and why.

I’m looking forward to having chapter one re-done so that I can read it through with a fresh perspective on the novel. The remaining chapters don’t seem to need the same amount of attention.

It’s a good start.

Where to start

Tanya V 10 February 2021

I’m starting at the beginning.

I’ve started at the beginning of my story many times before shifting the starting point and pondering the origin story – what it is, how to tell it, where and how does it start…

Imagery is important to me, I’m a visual writer often writing what I see in my mind and doing my best to document that vision as I tell the story. Sharing what I see is my story telling method which makes me a sucker for descriptive writing. Using the images that I have in mind also makes the narrative sketchy with gaps at times and caught up with too much thought around details that I question as necessary.

With my writing to date I have created a word document where I have pasted my work in order as best I can. I’ve done three things with this file for navigating my work.

1 – I’ve pasted the writing in sections of chapters as I currently see them to cluster story parts together which makes it easier to find the story part that I’m working on to save me time and frustration when looking for ‘that bit’.

2 – I’ve colour coded each piece of writing to help define different pieces that I’ve written over time, in part this has become unnecessary as I dissect and move the pieces about editing in new writing as I go. Colour coding has and still does help me to move through the writing referencing where I am at visually with colour though.

3 – The file is now my work in progress as I continue to shuffle what I have written, add to it, and use past writing as the bones of what I am working on.

For the past few days I have chipped away at how I will tell the story with a focus on committing to a style. I want to tell this old disputed narrative that sits in the intersecting realms of fantasy, religion, history, and origin with a tone that honours all. Can I do this? I really don’t know but I am going to get lost in that idea and give it a go. This type of story has always appealed to me, I get sucked in to the awe and wonder that they embody within their telling. If a story has me questioning I know that it’s a good one, I know that I can lose myself their and revel in my imagination. To root myself in that the lost time that imagination serves up I have a saying of my own that I always come back to when considering any story that provokes me in such a way and that is:

I don’t care if a story is true, I only care if it is good

With this in mind I will attempt to capture the feeling of being lost in a story because it is good.