{"id":6072,"date":"2009-10-29T11:02:26","date_gmt":"2009-10-29T16:02:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/2009\/10\/29\/good_writing_vs_good_storytelling\/"},"modified":"2009-10-29T11:02:26","modified_gmt":"2009-10-29T16:02:26","slug":"good_writing_vs_good_storytelling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/2009\/10\/29\/good_writing_vs_good_storytelling\/","title":{"rendered":"Good Writing vs. Good Storytelling"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Image<\/a><\/div>\n

Today I am working on the 1st chapter of my first book … yet again.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Why would I do this<\/strong> when I am almost 30% done writing the second book? The reason is because I have been uneasy, nay unhappy with that chapter ever since I did my major restructuring.<\/p>\n

What happened was that my first book was too big. I originally wrote it to 154,000 words—way too big for the Christian publishers—and so I cut it down to 123,000 words. Still too big.<\/p>\n

So a few months ago, I did a radical thing.<\/strong> I cut all of the first nine chapters, and then cherry-picked the best writing and fit it back in. What I ended up with flowed nicely, and my novel was down to 109,000 words. <\/p>\n

Flowed nicely?<\/strong> Not the first and second scene of chapter 1.<\/p>\n

It turns out that both scenes were EXCELLENT writing, from my perspective. I loved them. I was happy with the way they were written.<\/p>\n

So what was wrong?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It wasn’t good storytelling.<\/em> <\/p>\n

By that, I mean that it didn’t flow right. Scene 1 had nothing to do with Scene 2, and so I shoe-horned them together to get them to fit, but it never felt right to me.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately,<\/strong> I sent this shoe-horned version out to some agents. Ah well! I’m fixing it now. I’m moving scene 1 (excellent writing) a bit later, and bringing back in some writing that I had cut.<\/p>\n

The story will now flow. The action will be exciting. Everything will fit.<\/p>\n

So … remember,<\/strong> just because you know how to write doesn’t necessarily mean that you know how to tell a good story. The two aren’t the same, as I have so painfully learned. Both must work together to create a properly crafted novel.<\/p>\n

Views: 60<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\nToday I am working on the 1st chapter of my first book … yet again. Why would I do this…\n<\/div>\n
Continue reading “Good Writing vs. Good Storytelling”<\/span>…<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6073,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[51,28,36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6072","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-editing-fiction","category-on-writing-fiction","category-progress-reports","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/400px-Millais_Boyhood_of_Raleigh6.jpg?fit=400%2C338","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p67v0M-1zW","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6072","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6072"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6072\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6073"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6072"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6072"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6072"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}