Category: Getting Started

Blog 12 “Courting Characters” and Blog 13 “Creating Characters” were all about characterization. Well, not quite all. Although they dwelt on determining which characters you wanted to populate your fiction and how to reveal them, they didn’t go far enough. They didn’t address the sine qua non of characterization: dialogue. The phrase sine qua non is a perfect, if somewhat snooty, way to describe the effects of dialogue. It is essential for “nailing a character,” as author Rita Mae Brown puts it. It is as necessary as chocolate chips in chocolate chip cookies.

Now that you have courted characters (Blog #12) for your story, novel, screenplay, or other fiction and can identify a possible protagonist, an antagonist, a co-protagonist or – antagonist, a love interest, a foil, or even some tertiary characters, you’re ready to create them. I know! That sounds backwards. But once you have in mind some characters (and the conflict and possible plot that links them) you’re ready to go deeper, particularly to create characters as fully as you can before beginning to write. After that, they’ll take over. . .but that’s another blog.

At the end of the last blog (#11 Giving Chase to Plot), I invited you to “Choose one [word] from Column A and one from Column B [and] imagine a plot based on the two words. Imagine a few episodes you’d want to develop your plot.” I wrote, “Each combination suggests a plot to me – at this point, not very exciting – but, still, a plot.” Not really. I prevaricated, stretched the truth a bit. I found only one combination that suggested a viable plot to me.

What does giving chase have to do with writing? In this and the next three blogs, I explore how writing is an ongoing process of chasing what works in fiction and non-fiction. It’s not prolonged and unrelenting, just steady. We persist, sometimes in the subway of our minds (see my first blog), until we understand what works. When I checked the derivation of the word chase, I learned at vocabulary.com that To chase is to follow or go after someone or something you want. This activity is called a chase. Dogs chase cats, cats chase mice, and mice are in big trouble. The word chase tried to run away from the Old French word chacier for “to hunt or strive for,” but we caught it.”

How fast would you eat raw rhubarb? Ice cream? Saltwater taffy? These and other questions invite you to think about pace. The key is to move along as fast as the mind of the reader. . .but how do you know how fast the mind of the reader wants to go?

So, where do you start?

The answer is simple. You write what you need to write. Then you have permission to begin your piece there or search for it somewhere else – a few pages beyond the first page, in the middle of the piece, even at the end of the piece.

You may not think you’re ready for AP writing. I know this is only the eighth blog you’ve read, but you’re ready to think seriously about AUDIENCE and PURPOSE (and I’m going to throw in another “A”.

The title of this blog sounds a bit like a warning. Beware: Your first word is your last. It’s not, however. It’s just a crisp way of saying that you won’t get to the last word of your writing if you don’t write a first word.