{"id":1495,"date":"2008-10-07T00:00:15","date_gmt":"2008-10-07T00:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/shilohwalker.wordpress.com\/?p=1495"},"modified":"2008-10-07T00:00:15","modified_gmt":"2008-10-07T00:00:15","slug":"ever-wondered-where-to-start","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shilohwalker.com\/website\/2008\/10\/ever-wondered-where-to-start\/","title":{"rendered":"Ever wondered where to start?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Are you a writer who’s ever wondered where to start the story?<\/p>\n

One of the best pieces of advice I ever got for this problem came from Dianne Castell<\/a> via a workshop she gave to the KYRW<\/a> writing group.<\/p>\n

She said…<\/p>\n

Start where the trouble starts<\/em>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Good advice.\u00a0 When I think back to the stories that came the easiest, even from the get-go, those stories always started right where the trouble started.<\/p>\n

In Whipped Cream and Handcuffs<\/a>, a short story I wrote in under four hours, the story opens up where the heroine is getting pressies from a secret admirer.\u00a0 Where is the trouble in that?\u00a0 Well, she was engaged at the time.\u00a0 To a guy that didn’t really love her and really just wanted to control her, but still. She had feelings for him, cared for him, but she’s getting gifts from uber-sexy secret admirer who makes her palms sweat.\u00a0 Yep, that was trouble.\u00a0 I knew where the story was going right from the get-go and it came so easy.<\/p>\n

In Once Upon A Midnight Blue<\/a>, writing in about six hours, a fairy-tale themed novella, the story opens with the hero enjoying the fruits of his labors-so to speak- as the favored right hand of the kind-and then, bam, in a couple of paragraphs, he’s left to die in a field after he saves his King’s people from sure and certain death.\u00a0 Betrayed and pissed, he’s out get revenge, and sets his sights on the King’s pretty daughter.\u00a0 Trouble.<\/p>\n

In Hunting the Hunter<\/a>, I struggled for two months on that monster, trying to figure out where the story was going wrong.\u00a0 It was the beginning.\u00a0 In June 2005, about two months before the book was due, I tossed it.\u00a0 I mean chucked the entire thing and started over, because I wasn’t starting at the right point.\u00a0 I thought there was ‘trouble’ but it wasn’t the right trouble apparently.\u00a0 Once I got the right trouble down, the book came together just like that-at the point, it was the longest book I’d written and it took six weeks, from start to finish, once I found the right place to start…the revised story opened up with the hero and his partner are attacked by vampires and the hero is left thinking his partner is dead and so he gets in his head to start eradicating any and all vamps.\u00a0 The heroine?\u00a0 She’s a vampire.\u00a0 Trouble.<\/p>\n

In Beautiful Girl<\/a>, the story opens when the heroine, Del, decides to go back for a high school reunion and face her demons-the demons were deeply personal, but they were controlling her life, so right from the get-go, the minute she got into her car to make the drive, the trouble was there.<\/p>\n

What’s the point of this post?\u00a0 Well, if you’re one of the writers who, like me, try to figure out just where to start…figure out where the trouble starts.\u00a0 Once you’ve got that, you know where to start.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Are you a writer who’s ever wondered where to start the story?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_10161045129738658_54762468447":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_bluesky_dont_syndicate":"","_bluesky_syndication_accounts":"","_bluesky_syndication_text":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[61],"tags":[566,572],"class_list":["post-1495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing","tag-romance","tag-writing"],"yoast_head":"\nEver wondered where to start? 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