Grabbing Readers by the Throat

I finished writing a new novel earlier this month. After letting it sit a week or so, I started rereading it, revising, and sending preliminary drafts out for critique to my writing group.

Now, you must know that the idea for this novel came to me years ago - when I was only a junior in high school. However, all the pieces didn't click together until now, when the book came rushing out of my fingers and pounded in the keys of my laptop.

When I started writing just a few months ago, I began with a sentence (like all of us do). Let's call that Sentence A.

However, when I looked over my notes, I found another beginning sentence I'd written back in high school. This is Sentence B. Not only was it completely different, but it started me almost two chapters prior in the day than what I wrote in Sentence A.

So, naturally, I decided I'd play out what happened between Sentence B and Sentence A. Five thousand words of exposition later, I had a first and second chapter cluttering up the most important part of my novel - the beginning.

It's not like that information is bad, or not useful, or even boring. Things happen. Important characters are introduced. The world is set up.

But it isn't the RIGHT information. It's not the stuff that readers need to know about the protagonist and the inciting incident right from the very first page.

In fact, one of the women in my writing group said, "It's not like Sentence B didn't grab me. It did. It took me by the hand. But Sentence A grabs me by the throat and doesn't let me go."

The strange part about all of this is that I knew that Sentence A was better. I knew that I had to start my novel there all along.

And you know too.

You know when you read through your draft that that verb is too flowery or that sentence isn't right. You know when your protagonist's monologue that stretches for three pages is way too much dialogue and not enough action. You know that you had to start with Sentence A rather than Sentence B.

That's the beauty of being a writer. All you need is within you. You can feel the self doubt creeping in, whispering "that doesn't work." You hear it, even subconsciously, and it puts this seed inside you that makes you show your work to others and ask, "Hey, what do you think of Sentence B?"

Every time (if they're not lying to save your feelings), your readers and critiquers, and yes, your agents, know that you should cut Sentence B and all that precedes it.

The power lies within you. The hard part is learning to listen to it.

The reward, however, is great. I'd much rather grab a reader by the throat and have them tearing through my novel than lead them timidly by the hand.