Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Provisionals

We had our final Discovery class last week. (Lani will be offering the classes again in January,keep an eye out if you're interested.)
I have listened to several author's talk about opening scenes. How the first time you write it, it's just practice. Especially if you (like me) are a pantser (compared to a plotter). There are all sorts of things one wants to accomplish in an opening scene and you can't properly figure all that out until you know what your whole book is. (I hear tell that even the plotters are often surprised at the twists that happen. Which is why (although this might change (hey, have you noticed I'm getting really parenthetical here?)) I think plotting is like swatching, it makes you feel better but often as not it doesn't really reflect the finished product.)
Now of course, you might say, well, just skip it. And you could. But it usually helps to have some sort of placeholder in there even if the gazillionth time you tweak it it ends up looking nothing like how it started.
Lani, who is also a knitter, explained that your first crack at the opening scene is like a provisional cast on. You need something to anchor all the stuff after, but you're going to come back and do something cool with it later. This is just the waste yarn.
I loved this. It's made that extra click in my brain.