I'd really like to regale you with tales of how much I hated writing this chapter, but I suppose that would ruin some of the magic for readers (assuming, there is, in fact, magic—you might have already decided the story is lame, and moved on to other eSerials). Still, I hated this. So. Much.
Let's take a quick jaunt down memory lane—I still have my original scripts from when I did this for class. Looking over them a few years ago, I felt the pilot moved way too slow. It should be faster and more intense. This is television, after all. All this time I've had that in mind—an exciting two-part pilot that introduced everything and began with a bang.
Surprise, surprise, that doesn't work when you're writing a novel.
I tried though. Oh, how I tried. It was exciting, fast paced...but also jumpy, mildly incoherent, and lacking in characterization. I also realized that while I know CotA inside out and was eager to get to the action, no one else has been living with the story in their head for the past six years, and might be a little confused. So I cut, rearranged, and rewrote everything several times, changing my original plan of having this exciting three part introduction to the series. The original arc I was going to use is still there, only stretched over seven or eight parts. As a result, I like it better, and I'm more comfortable with it. I hope you will be too.
My other hesitation came with keeping the main characters in high school. I wrote the original when I was in high school myself, which is why I set it there, but I began rethinking it the last month or so. College was a possibility I considered—I figured since my target audience is 18-35, older characters would be preferable. But there's something about the high school age and setting that I love. For one thing, it's a time when people discover who they are, which mirrors the events in CotA. But also, public high school is, in a weird way, an example of the real world. It's a place with vastly different people, all with vastly different interests, trying to get along, trying to stay sane, forming bonds only to break them again, trying to survive under authority figures just as you're beginning to question it all. In high school, you spend your time working and learning things that seem so important at the time, only to find that at the end of it all, none of that matters. That just screams real world to me, and it seems to be the place where my characters need to be at the beginning of the story. I did, however, age them from fifteen to sixteen for the book, so at least they won't be in high school all that long.
Now that that's out of the way, onto the specifics of writing the first chapter. While CotA is an ensemble piece, I can't very well begin that way. The reader needs one initial person to connect with, to see the POV of. In this case, it's Genevieve Weist. Gen's been through a lot of changes—the original character was named Sarah, and she was, in a lot of ways, like the typical “Snarky Heroine” that seems to be arising in works as of late. I like my snarky heroines, but I like them with depth, and Sarah was feeling way too two dimensional to me. And so we have Genevieve.
Unfortunately, she was acting very difficult while writing this, and I had a hell of time getting a hold of her character. As I was rereading the first few chapters, however, Genevieve Weist really emerged for me. I started noticing how different her reactions were depending on her environment—funny and sarcastic with her friends (Levi and Stephie, or her parents, for example), shy and at a loss for words in situations (or with people) where she was less comfortable (for example, when singled out by Ms. Kern, or with Janine in a later chapter). That's probably why she was acting difficult earlier for me—she didn't know me well enough.
Anyway, with this chapter, I stuck almost exclusively with Genevieve's POV, and probably will in the next couple as well. Besides readers connecting with Gen, I'm hoping they also get a feel for the supporting cast, as well as a sense of the very real danger Gen is in at the end.
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"She wrapped evil around her like a large, evil Mexican serape."
Author Commentary
I'd really like to regale you with tales of how much I hated writing this chapter, but I suppose that would ruin some of the magic for readers (assuming, there is, in fact, magic—you might have already decided the story is lame, and moved on to other eSerials). Still, I hated this. So. Much.
Let's take a quick jaunt down memory lane—I still have my original scripts from when I did this for class. Looking over them a few years ago, I felt the pilot moved way too slow. It should be faster and more intense. This is television, after all. All this time I've had that in mind—an exciting two-part pilot that introduced everything and began with a bang.
Surprise, surprise, that doesn't work when you're writing a novel.
I tried though. Oh, how I tried. It was exciting, fast paced...but also jumpy, mildly incoherent, and lacking in characterization. I also realized that while I know CotA inside out and was eager to get to the action, no one else has been living with the story in their head for the past six years, and might be a little confused. So I cut, rearranged, and rewrote everything several times, changing my original plan of having this exciting three part introduction to the series. The original arc I was going to use is still there, only stretched over seven or eight parts. As a result, I like it better, and I'm more comfortable with it. I hope you will be too.
My other hesitation came with keeping the main characters in high school. I wrote the original when I was in high school myself, which is why I set it there, but I began rethinking it the last month or so. College was a possibility I considered—I figured since my target audience is 18-35, older characters would be preferable. But there's something about the high school age and setting that I love. For one thing, it's a time when people discover who they are, which mirrors the events in CotA. But also, public high school is, in a weird way, an example of the real world. It's a place with vastly different people, all with vastly different interests, trying to get along, trying to stay sane, forming bonds only to break them again, trying to survive under authority figures just as you're beginning to question it all. In high school, you spend your time working and learning things that seem so important at the time, only to find that at the end of it all, none of that matters. That just screams real world to me, and it seems to be the place where my characters need to be at the beginning of the story. I did, however, age them from fifteen to sixteen for the book, so at least they won't be in high school all that long.
Now that that's out of the way, onto the specifics of writing the first chapter. While CotA is an ensemble piece, I can't very well begin that way. The reader needs one initial person to connect with, to see the POV of. In this case, it's Genevieve Weist. Gen's been through a lot of changes—the original character was named Sarah, and she was, in a lot of ways, like the typical “Snarky Heroine” that seems to be arising in works as of late. I like my snarky heroines, but I like them with depth, and Sarah was feeling way too two dimensional to me. And so we have Genevieve.
Unfortunately, she was acting very difficult while writing this, and I had a hell of time getting a hold of her character. As I was rereading the first few chapters, however, Genevieve Weist really emerged for me. I started noticing how different her reactions were depending on her environment—funny and sarcastic with her friends (Levi and Stephie, or her parents, for example), shy and at a loss for words in situations (or with people) where she was less comfortable (for example, when singled out by Ms. Kern, or with Janine in a later chapter). That's probably why she was acting difficult earlier for me—she didn't know me well enough.
Anyway, with this chapter, I stuck almost exclusively with Genevieve's POV, and probably will in the next couple as well. Besides readers connecting with Gen, I'm hoping they also get a feel for the supporting cast, as well as a sense of the very real danger Gen is in at the end.
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"She wrapped evil around her like a large, evil Mexican serape."