I Started My Book in the Wrong Place!

I finished the ‘sequel’ to Be Careful What You Wish For a couple of months ago, and now I’m ready to do my first revision. I usually do several, each time focusing on different things. Also, I make sure there’s time in between to give myself the best chance to forget the story and see it with fresh eyes. That way I give myself the best chance to spot loose ends, plot holes, and anything else in the storyline itself that really needs to be addressed. It’s sort of embarrassing to have a beta reader (they come after alpha readers) to point out that your hero could easily have escaped the dragon by simply climbing into his space ship that he conveniently left three feet behind him and turning on the shields. Or something. I don’t write anything with dragons or spaceships, so this is unlikely to happen to me. The point, however, remains valid.

Anyway, so I’m ready to do a revision and I start . . . humming along, fixing punctuation, tweaking sentences for readability, things like that . . . and I realize that I don’t get to The Point of No Return until chapter three.

That’s bad.

This is why we do revisions, people. Correction: This is one reason why we do revisions, people. I started my book in the wrong place and I’m not a happy camper. Or did I? Not necessarily. Yes, I have to fix it. In Be Careful What You Wish For, it took longer than I wanted to meet the genie, and I dropped an earlier hint of things to come to lead people along. This time it’s much, much worse. But did I genuinely start writing in the wrong place?

The thing about writing is it’s a creative process. It’s nice to start writing your novel at the point in the story where your novel is actually going to begin, but you don’t always have that choice. If you plan out the whole thing, it certainly swings the odds in your favor, I admit that. You don’t know until you pick it up for that first round of revisions if you pulled it off. Sometimes that first chapter was just for you to get to know your characters and has nothing to do with the reader or the story. It has to go. Take a step back, put on your critic’s cap, and ask yourself: Where is The Point of No Return for your character? In the Three-Act Structure, it’s common for the point of no return to be about a quarter of the way through. I personally think that’s too far in, but that’s me.

At this point, I’ll add that I don’t personally follow the Three-Act Structure template. I like my stories to be more character-driven and this focuses on plot too much. My characters lead me on their quest and I record it. I don’t usually plan ahead, and this makes following a structure a little more difficult. I do think this template makes a good point about how the book is divided into the beginning, middle, and end; and ensures you have the right amount of tension in each section. I think it makes writers take a stronger look at what they’ve created (plot-wise) and see if it follows the general trend. There are other plot-templates, this is just one. You see the term thrown around a lot with screenplays, but it’s applied to books as well.

Now we’ve established that I write by the seat of my pants and don’t consciously follow any real guide when I write. (With the exception of the Lexi Frost & Thousand Words series of novels, which I have a very vague outline for that should last me through about twelve books. I set things up books in advance with those.) I just sit down and start writing because I don’t want to get bogged down in needing to follow a format or structure. I don’t want to distract myself and dampen my creativity. However, if you’ve written 25,000 words and your character hasn’t left home yet to start his quest, maybe structure will provide a little guidance.

For this book, as it was with Be Careful What You Wish For, I hit that Point of No Return well before the quarter-mark the template usually suggests. It’s still farther along than I want it to be. I can provide little hooks to maintain interest until the reader gets there, but should I?

Let’s move on to look at Act I: The Beginning AKA what’s going on before the character hits The Point of No Return. Typically, it’s introducing the characters, the world, establishing the tone and voice, providing the conflict and showing what the stakes are.

Did I do that? Yes. So why am I complaining? Because it’s what I do. Deal with it.

Fine, so I want my The Point of No Return to be earlier in the book. Choices? Toss chapters 1 & 2 and fit the pertinent information into flashbacks, conversations, etc. (No, I won’t do an infodump, that’s sloppy.) There’s too much to easily fit in, and the reader will need this information before The Point of No Return, further complicating that option. All right, time to look at those first two chapters with a hyper-critical eye.

This time everything is suspect to important questions and I have a ‘take no prisoners’ policy in my mind. Does the reader really need to know this? Does the reader need to know this now? Everything that doesn’t receive two thumbs-up either needs to be moved or outright chucked. I can develop the main characters just fine starting from chapter 3. Can I eliminate enough to merge chapters 1 & 2? That would move my character’s Point of No Return up quite a bit. Can I do that without sacrificing the story’s tone and voice? Will it make readability suffer?

I’m skeptical I can trim and move that much, but we’ll see. Part of the point is showing how a comfortable, stable life is slowly turning upside-down. You can’t rush comfortable and stable too much without it showing. There’s one way to really find out: save a copy of the original work and just do it. See what the result is when I go in there with my pen/sword and start slashing. I can re-add bits, or return to the original version if I need to. At least I’ll know I made an effort to make the story as exciting as I could for my reader.