Developing the first Five Chapters

As I struggle to develop the narrative voice of my characters and tend to write it all and then patch it up later, the first five chapters - the hook of the story - are incredibly important to me. When writing the first chapters, I needed to make sure that my narrative was consistent and my characters had solid foundations.

The First Spark: Tension, simplicity and intrigue

This was a very hard scene to write. The reasoning behind the difficulty is very simply I was writing from a child's perspective about something that is very fundamental to the plot. This scene has gone through so many revisions and I am so proud of the end result. I had to really strip back the language I used in this scene, as again, it was from a child's perspective. Seven-year-olds don't talk like adults. They're very simple and straight to the point.

The challenge is that I like writing flowery stuff and keeping to simple is against everything I've learned about how I write. I had a compromise with myself, I could write using a lot of metaphors, providing I kept them simple and to the point. I had to focus on specific concrete details and senses. This would be really overwhelming for the child and so I needed to make sure that it was a cornerstone to portray that.

this opening scene meant that i had a lot of pressure to deliver. You have just bought my book and paid good money for it - especially with how hard things are because of the Cost of Living Crisis around the world at the moment - and wanted great literature from it and an entertaining read. I hope to give it to you.

Before I move onto the next scene, I want to make this particularly clear to you. This was the other hardest part of the scene to write. The reason being was that it was a conversation about death, but it is my favorite part of this scene. Now, the conversation, I found really hard to write, not because I have experienced death directly, but because I haven't had anyone die when I was younger and so I struggled to encapsulate the feeling.

Managing introductions

This scene makes my heart feel tense. There is a reason that it's my favorite of the opening scenes and one specific reason is that I like creating tension. have you ever ridden a roller coaster (I personally hate them) and you have to go up and down up and down up and down and so on, which your heart keeps going at a hundred miles an hour. the same idea is with writing - where my job as the author is to keep you on the ride for as long as possible before letting you down the largest drop of your life. I can't keep you up here forever, though, so I need to let you down.

There are little aspects of this scene that I absolutely love. I think a few places where I can improve is on my showing and not telling. I wanted to drive home hoe threatening the Demons are in this scene to Lexi and I wanted her to witness a guard (who she doesn't think highly of) getting killed for you, as the reader to think 'oh sh*t'. It's what I call the Derek Landy storytelling method, as he murders everyone in a second in some of his books. Difference is here, you're not meant to care about the Demons.

When people come together

This scene is quite integral to the plot. I decided to have the two paths converge and give both characters two scenes alone to showcase how they are before forcing them together like this. I wanted to make the reader understand the different perspectives and give a introduction to the world whilst doing so. they come from very different worlds and I can't wait to make them come together harder, faster, and in different ways. the sarcasm I've given Lexi in this scene is a hallmark of her character going forward and I loved writing it. Coupled with a mysterious character's footnotes, you will need to read the novel to grasp the amount of fun I've had writing them.

A Final Note

I hope you have enjoyed reading about my creative process. As I write more chapters and edit them, I will make sure to add more to this series of blog posts! I hope you've found this useful. Are you writing anything at the moment? If so, tell me about it!