The Future Before The Present
Today’s the first day of the month, and as planned, I’ve started writing down the plan for The Wall of Silence (first volume in the trilogy). While doing so, and while referring to previous writings I had done for this project–which I’ll keep, but only if they fit the new plan–I came to wonder about the way I had been introducing the story and the universe. I think I’ve in fact started by a technique that may be better in movies. However, I’m not sure about that; perhaps it can work in this novel all the same.
The technique I have in mind may be close to the flashback one, except that it’s not a character remembering an element of the past, but an element of the future placed before the present. Back when I started writing this, I intended my first chapter to be an action scene introducing the place my characters are from, but only briefly–they’re running away, and the end of the chapter would see them thrown into the other main setting of the world (there are two main geographic settings, but let’s not enter into this too much). Later on, I came to wonder if I shouldn’t add some more to this, a few other scenes happening before this one.Read More
I’m very talented at that–writing scenes that I can’t use, or that turn out to be “too much”. I suspect it’s because I very often start by creating the characters instead of the plot, and as a result, I end up writing bits of scenes and chapters in the spur of the moment, only to realize later on that they don’t fit the general plan.