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You will rarely write anything where you don’t – at some point – hit a stumbling block, a wrong turn, or a dead end. I hit my first wrong turn in TFSoLY, which is a result of me still trying to feel my way through the world and find out more about it. I like the introduction of the two central characters, but then I wanted a tour of the protagonist’s daily life. Only the way I was doing it wasn’t working – a wrong turn. Taking a wrong turn is a bigger problem than hitting a stumbling block or a dead end. A stumbling block is a minor annoyance…
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Something I consider irreplaceable in any form of writing – and particularly in writing a novel – is getting the first line right. The right first line unlocks everything that’s required for a novel: a way into the story establishing the world and characters finding the road that the story will take. Which is what’s made trying to get started on ‘TFSoLY’ so frustrating. Throughout the week, I sat down and hammered out some openings, but every one felt wrong: one came in at the wrong place, so it felt like I was on some ill-lit side-road to the story; another was summarising too much, which made the first page…