Have you seen the movie, Finding Forrester? In it, Sean Connery. as the reclusive writer of one marvelous novel, William Forrester, reluctantly tutors a gifted African-American teenager, Jamal Wallace, on the art of writing. When he sit the young man down at a typewriter and Jamal slowly hunts and pecks at a story, Forrester illustrates his first draft philosophy. Just write, he says, don’t think. You can fix the words in the revision but let the story flow. I have been taught the same thing but those other messages … show don’t tell … don’t use too many adverbs … keep the story moving … are always in the back of my mind. So, this is where I write down concerns with the draft to take care of later … maybe. For example:
12/13/1020 – So, today I picked up one of my favorite Alice Hoffmann novels, Second Nature and read Chapter 1. I think I dive too soon into the dialog in what I’ve written so far. So, what used to be Chapter 1 becomes a placeholder for Chapter 2, where we’ll meet Stacy and get to witness Bill Andrews’ seizure. I’ve started drafting a new Chapter 1.
11/4/2010 – Reading over the draft of Chapter 1, it seems that my description of how Bill ended up at the trailer park (eliminating complications) may be too much telling too early in the story. We’ll see.
