Don’t Start at the Very Beginning – Necessarily

The ‘very good place to start’ can actually impede your creative writing output

As all creative writers are avid readers, or were at some point, it seems logical to compose stories in the order our audiences will read them. But this causes all sorts of issues that can slow down the creative process to a snail’s pace or kill it altogether.

First things first: Where’s Your Interest?

At different times in the creative process, it’s likely that certain ideas will interest you more than others. Perhaps one character’s actions are necessary to advance the plot, but you’re really itching to write that chase sequence that isn’t for a few chapters yet. For some bizarre reason, you resist the urge to write for thrills and limit yourself to powering through your current section until you get there. When you finally arrive at your destination another part of the narrative holds your interest and makes what would be an exhilarating sequence oddly lacklustre.

This is madness, and I’ve been guilty of it myself until very recently. It took a piece of advice from a fellow River Writer last month for me to realise that the sections that gave me the most trouble in edits and rewrites were those I felt needed powering through to get to the good stuff later in the story. If I’d created those moments as and when I found them interesting, I could have saved myself untold hours of gutting clumsy work by freeing my mind from the obsessive imagination loop (replaying those exciting bits I hadn’t yet committed to paper) and returning to the other sequences with a clearer focus.

“I’m your subconscious – we haven’t spoken in a while” – Marlin, the Little Clownfish from the Reef

Many a teenage student of English Literature, myself included, has wondered whether the great writers of the past actually intended half of what their teachers insist they analyse. In my humble opinion some of the most intriguing elements that occur in great works of fiction are so subtle that some of them must be happy accidents.

If this is the case then you should want to create the ideal conditions for this as often as possible. Writing is an emotive exercise so it’s not a drastic leap to assume that a lot of your best work happens organically and subconsciously as you create. I would argue that this can only happen when your level of engagement in the narrative is at its peak.

What’s more anything that can put you off getting further with your project needs to be dealt with. Feeling like you have to finish off a scene will not only permeate the dialogue, but it could easily make you more vulnerable to procrastination and lead to you missing those crucial submission deadlines. So: don’t do it to yourself and write what you want when you want.

Of course not all writers suffer from such a misunderstood sense of discipline, but for those that do I would strongly encourage you to liberate yourself from the shackles of linear audience composition. Ultimately everybody wants to be entertained and enjoy your work as much as possible, but if you didn’t enjoy creating it in the first place then it’s unlikely your story will ignite anyone else’s imagination, right?

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