Writing Blog

20211211 story beginning

December 11, 2021, 9:30pm

Yesterday I started a story. How far it goes I don’t know yet. I have 312 stories that are unfinished on my computer or in my box of documents, some dating back as far as 1988. If it doesn’t go anywhere, that’s okay. That’s the way things go. But what it does do is give me an opportunity to talk about how the majority of my stories are written.

Last night I had an idea for a character. I read an open call from a publisher who wants HEA romance novels featuring heterosexual protagonists who are over the age of 30, preferably 40. I was intrigued. I started with a character based on me – old, single, lonely, 50. But that quickly faded. He became 30-odd. He had never had a job or career or any formal education beyond high school. He’d worked a series of odd physical labour jobs, was slightly overweight (yes, I kept that element from me, though I am closer to obese), had never really done anything.

Okay, next question – why is he like that? I thought about it, and came to a conclusion. As a teenager he’d saved some-one. Me being who I am, I decided he’d saved a woman from a sacrifice by what I am currently thinking of as black witches, but which will change as the story progresses. That was perfect, because I now had the reason for his unsuccessful life: he doesn’t know it yet, but he’s been cursed.

This gave rise to the rescue. Three completely bald naked woman were shaving a younger woman (older than our hero) and burning her hair leading up to the sacrifice. The smell was what attracted him. I have the scene all set.

But I couldn’t just blurt it out.

The protagonist remembers the past, but he is not thinking about it all at once. He remembers the rescue, and some of the aftermath, and the reader is drip-fed.

All right. Two ideas. Time to synthesise.

I wrote the opening thirty words. Discarded them. And again. And again. I needed a break. I went to the post office to get my mail. That was what I needed. I went to a sprint channel on a Discord. Just over an hour of 10 minute sprints and I’d written 2000 words, chapter 1. The reader knows he rescued some-one, and this is the anniversary of the rescue because the woman has sent him a thank-you card, as she did every year at this time. The reader also knows this happened in rural South Australia and the protagonist’s history.

An hour break, rest my shoulder, then hit again. 6 sprints of ten minutes over the course of little more than an hour and a half, 2.5k words, chapter 2 done. Now we know what happened immediately after the rescue to the woman, plus that it broke the man’s relationship, and what he now does for a living. The actual sacrifice ritual still has not been described, and the only mention of the 3 bald witches is a discussion of their bodies. I introduced a dying cop, the one who was there at the time, and had never stopped looking into things. He and the protag have a discussion. Exposition dumps work better that way.

Today, no sprints, but a slow writing day (I had a column to write as well). 2.2k words, chapter 3 done. The woman has come to the protag for the first time in 13 years. We finally find out what had happened all those years before – the ritual is described. Chapter ends with the dying cop turning up. I stopped there because I am not happy with the chapter. It feels too rushed. So tomorrow, I’ll look at it again, revise it, then see where – or even if – the story goes from here.

Sorry this is so long, but I think an example is the best way to explain how my writing process goes. I am not a plotter – I am pantsing. I know how the story will end at the moment, but that could change. I also know the protag and the woman are not going to end up together, but neither is going to die either.

Anyway, hope you liked that look into my mind as I write what possibly could be a longer work if it is ever completed.