I am very nearly finished writing my new book. In fact – by the time you read this, I may well have finished.
Writing a book is like giving birth – there are times things race along at great speed and you think – this will be done soon. There are other times when it seems that every word is agony and this will never end.
So I got to thinking (which is great procrastination) – what is the hardest part of the book to write?
Certainly not the first chapter. The first chapter is my very favourite part of writing a new book. It is so full of ideas and hope and possibilities.
Chapter two – not so easy. I often have trouble with the transition from Ch. 1 to Ch. 2 – because at this point, I’m beginning to realise that I have to turn that wonderful first scene into a whole book – and there are another 95,000 words to go.
Chapters 3 onwards are easy. I’ve got the bit between my teeth now (thinking about a book with horses in it leads to equine metaphors). That’s until I hit…
The big bit in the middle.
We’ve all heard about mid-book sag. It’s that part in the middle of the book where things drag. Get a bit dull. There’s a feeling of just trying to get through this bit so you can write the really exciting climax of the book.
Now – at this point I must confess I am not much of a plotter. Writing into the mist – that’s not half of it. I tend to have the first and last scene of a book in my head when I start writing – and just make the rest up as I go along.
So – when I hit the big bit in the middle – my solution is to do something dramatic. Kill off a character. Reveal a long hidden and terrible family secret. Crash a car. I can do this because I don’t have a carefully worked out plot to destroy. I’ll do whatever will cause my characters the most concern and confusion (apologies for the sudden attack of alliteration).
After that, we are racing towards the climax of the book – so those chapters just flow. My fingers can’t move fast enough to get the words down… and then…
I stop about two chapters from the end of the book.
These, for me, are the hardest chapters to write. Why? Because I already know how the book ends. I’ve seen it all in my head. My characters already have their happy ever after or their just desserts. In my head, that story is over and the characters of the next book are jumping up and down – clamouring for my attention.
However, as my editors and readers tend to want those last two chapters – I do write them. I write them very quickly – because I want to be at the starting post for the next book as soon as possible.
I never type ‘the end’ because a story never ends. Authors just reach the point where they stop writing them down and leave the characters to get on with their lives.
And writing THE END is nowhere near as much fun as writing… Chapter One.
Comments
21 responses to “The hardest chapter”
I’m the opposite. Chap 1 is the hardest – not the hardest necessarily to write in the first draft but the hardest to finish. The opening is always the bit I tinker with again and again and then abandon completely and rewrite, and then change back to how it was before, and then rewrite again, and then scrap the whole thing and promote Ch2 to Ch1 and tinker with that etc. etc. I’m the same with short stories – the opening paragraph gets hacked about like nobody’s business.
I do tinker with the opening chapter a bit – but not too much. I did re-write the first scene of one book about four times – but always came back to the same opening line – which more or less defines the themes of the whole book. So it stays!
Do you keep all the hacked about bits? I do in a folder called ‘BITS’
I do usually keep the bits. I normally end up with an archive folder for each piece where all the cut bits and early abandoned drafts go to die!
I’m like a bear with a sore head when I get to the last two chapters – I’m totally impossible to live with. All is not resolved for my characters, despite my knowing what will happen to them, until it’s written down in print, and I hate anyone interrupting me when I’m on that final stretch as I’m so longing to see my characters happy.
I think Chapter Four is the hardest. When you are trying to get published, you get into the habit of setting up the story and characters in the first three chapters, and you leave the fourth to almost take care of itself. With the first three chapters setting up the situation, they are relatively easy – the fourth is a more demanding as there’s no more setting up. Instead, that’s where the story really gets going. And it has to be right for the reader to continue turning the pages.
LOL Liz – I am now picturing you all big and brown and furry – with a bandage around your head.
Ch 4 … I guess that comes from the whole business of submitting three chapters to publishers and agents. I wonder if some people never write chapter four.
I think there’s something in the ‘submitting three chapters to publishers and agents’ idea. I know I fine-tuned my first three chapters again and again, until the rest of the book almost had to be completely rewritten just to live up to the first three! The last chapter was difficult too, the question whether to leave it more open-ended or tie everything up neatly? That got rewritten a few times too . . .
I think I would say both the beginning and end chapters are difficult 🙂
I don’t usually rewrite the last chapters – but sometime the ‘last’ chapter isn’t really the last.
I have just finished a new book – and what I thought was the last chapter turned out to be the second last chapter. My characters weren’t ready to leave the stage just yet. I cried when I wrote the last last chapter (as it were) – at which point my character wandered off to their HEA – content that they had made me cry.
Let’s add the middle to that, Berni! I find it all hard work, but very rewarding when it comes right.
You’ve hit the nail on the head Margaret – when it all comes right it feels wonderful….
I’m with Liz that Chapter Four is the hardest. The beginning is all shiny and wonderful as you establish these new characters, chapter two and three you set them in motion and give them dilemmas and problems to solve, and then BANG, along comes Chapter Four, where they actually have to *do* something. I’m not a plotter either, and Chapters Four to Seven are usually my characters burbling around, the metaphorical equivalent of ‘going shopping’, until the real plot kicks in. I inevitably have to rewrite this bit so…yup, hate it.
I just went back to have a look at my last chapter four – a penguin gets splattered by an exploding can of coke. I may have been a bit desperate for plot at that point too 🙂
Not being a plotter either the first couple of chapters are always like pulling teeth until things settle down, then of course there’s the dreaded middle, and after that you have to get to the end – quite honestly we must be mad to do this but don’t seem to have any choice!
If this is madness, Angela, I don’t think I want to be sane. I like this too much.
I agree. I know I’m not far away from concluding Follow Me, but I’m not getting there quickly enough. Like you, Janet, I’m very clear about the content of the first and last chapters – the final scene has played out so often in my head, I feel as if I’ve already written it.
I also know what changes I wish to make and that’s holding me back a little – or is that a convenient excuse for not tackling the final couple of chapters…?
By the last couple of chapters I am usually thinking about minor tweaks earlier in the book. I know my character so well by the end of the book, they tell me to go fix stuff. Hopefully it’s small stuff…
I really don’t think I can choose one. For me, It depends on the story and some parts of it seem harder than others, but I don’t think this is related to any particular chapter. I’m basing this on the massive experience writing two books has brought!
Found everyone’s comments on this really interesting.
I am fascinated by how many different ways there are to write a book – everyone has a slightly different way of doing things – and I am always hoping to hear something I can copy to make my writing life better 🙂
The hardest part – definitely the saggy middle! I’m a ‘pantser’ too and write ‘into the mist’ like you, so always come to a grinding halt sooner or later. That’s when drastic action is called for – again like you! I guess we’re the same kind of writer 🙂
Maybe that’s why we like each other’s books, Christina.
Hands up from another pantster here – I’ve tried detailed plotting, post-it notes, mind maps and long lists but I always end up just sitting down and writing. Find the beginning easy, I love starting a race. Know what the end is by and large but two-thirds in aaaaargh! It’s then I find myself victim to all that ‘let’s get at ’em’ verve I started with, setting up all sorts of situations and journeys that then have to be resolved. That part of a book is like walking through treacle for me. I sit down, wander round, go out to water the plants, make a zillionth cup of coffee and procrastinate until I drive myself mad. Then, finally from somewhere deep in my psyche I see a chink of light that signals the way out and I just chip away at the bricks of the tunnel I have built myself and finally emerge into the sunshine. Phew, it’s hard work but we get there girls, eh?!?!
Hello fellow pantser.. I too have tried plotting in detail and it doesn’t work for me. I do make rough notes e.g. need something to happen to bring H and h to the river’ – but I have no idea what that will be until I write it. Towards the end of the book, I cover my PC and wall with post-its to remind me what I have to wrap up. Like you Cara, I think our deep writers sub-conscious guides us well.