While scrolling through my Quora Digest feed, I noticed this question:
As fiction writers, how do you get past the common feeling of “This is awful” when you start to write?
Marshall Karp provides a great answer with a hilarious story that frames the difference between having a pessimistic outlook on life or an optimistic one. 🙂
Well, I’m in the process of starting one of those first drafts. To help decrease the amount of manure, I created a simple outline using this structure for chapters and/or scenes:
Opposing character:
Disastrous ending of the scene (that answers the scene question):
POV character:
Character’s immediate goal:
Scene Question (can be answered with a yes or no?):
When my husband asked me how many words I was shooting for, I wasn’t sure. I’m still not sure. I’d like to finish it within 30,000 words, but that’s just an estimate. For the most part, I think that the word count doesn’t matter (at this time) as long as I tell the story and tell it well.
Using the outline above, I was able to complete the first chapter within an hour. Needless to say, this doesn’t mean I won’t return to it for revisions. Nothing is written in stone. I’m just happy that I jumped that hurdle.
Karp provides a great quote toward the end of his answer, which I had to use here:
Monique L. Desir 