Mailing list Sign up

Sunday, June 2, 2013

Butchism #1 Wheres the body!

My writer friends say I have a lot of, what they call Butchism's. or what I like to call writers advice. One of the main things I see when I read peoples starts to stories is a lacking beginning.
If you're a writer or want to be writer you're going to want a writers group. With that said my writer's group first Butchism is...
 "Where's the body!"
This comes from my start of writing murder mysteries, and I think this advice holds true to a lot of stories.
If you're writing a mystery and you don't have a body in the first 10 pages you have probably started your story in the wrong place.
Sure not every mystery or story has dead bodies all over the place, but the advice holds true if you know what the nugget really means.
It really means "Why do I as the reader give a crap about your story, your world, your writing" and ten pages is generous most readers give you a page or two till they've decided they're "in" or "out". so always keep that in mind.
If you're saying your "in" moment doesn't occur till page 12 then you may and probably have started your story in the wrong place. Pull the "in" moment forward  and cut the pages out leading up to the "in" moment and if that stuff you wrote is important to the overall story weave it into the story moving forward from there.
You want help with knowing where your "in" moment is... Thats what your writers group will be for.

Butch

No comments:

Post a Comment