Wednesday, August 4, 2021

Clicking Our Heels: Muddle in the Middle or at the Begining or the End?

Clicking Our Heels: Muddle in the Middle or at the Beginning or the End?

Today, the Stiletto Gang examines what each finds the hardest part of writing – beginnings, middles or ends?

Saralyn Richard – Whatever I’m currently writing (beginnings and endings are harder than middles).

Lois Winston – I spend quite a bit of time deciding on an opening sentence that will hook the reader.

Kathleen Kaska – The hardest part of writing fiction comes between the middle and the end. This is where I have to pull everything together. Being a punster makes it difficult, but outlining doesn’t work for me.

Linda Rodriguez – Middles! Always middles – when I often despair that I’ve forgotten how to write.

Debra H. Goldstein – Endings because I have to remember not to rush to tie things up and in a series give a taste of the future.

Shari Randall – Hands down beginnings are the toughest to write. I love spinning different endings and middles happen organically, but a beginning that entices the reader and sets the tone for the book is always a challenge.

Gay Yellen – I usually don’t begin writing until I know how the book starts and how it ends. The middle is the bugbear, because the mix of plot details and suspense is so critical.

Kathryn Lane – Middles are the nemeses I struggle with to make my writing as exciting as possible so the reader continues side by side with the protagonist, solving life-threatening situations.

Dru Ann Love – The beginning as I don’t know what to write without revealing spoilers.

Debra Sennefelder – The hardest part of writing for me lately hasn’t been the process of writing. It has been dealing with my upended routine and noise in the house during the day.

T.K. Thorne – I tend to write from beginning to end. If I have a concept of the ending, then the middle is hard, if I don’t, the end can be challenging, because everything has to come together in a surprising but satisfying way. I love beginnings, lol!

Anita Carter – Definitely beginnings. When I first start a new story, the possibilities of where the story can go are endless. Sometimes I’ll rewrite the first 50 pages three or four times until I feel like I’m taking the story in the right direction. It can be exhausting.

Mary Lee Ashford – Oh, I love beginnings and endings. But middles? They are hard. I think the good news is that in the middle there are so many choices and then the bad news is that there are so many choices. I do quite a bit of plotting before I begin writing but I find that once I’ve written to the middle of the book, there’s often a need to reassess what I originally had planned. It provides an opportunity to ask if there is a better choice now that the story has grown. So middles are hard, but also great fun.

Bethany Maines – Ends! I can churn out a great first act at the drop of a hat, but oh my, those endings. Managing to get all the pieces of the puzzle to line up and come to a satisfactory conclusion is the toughest part for me.

Robin Hillyer-Miles – Editing is the most difficult and most important for me.

 

2 comments:

  1. I love reading about the rest of the Stiletto Gang's writing methods and areas of difficulty. This blog provided areas I should think about in more detail, like Debra G.'s idea of giving a taste for the future in a series.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Like Anita, Lois, Shari, and, I suspect many others, I tend to rewrite my opening paragraphs numerous times. And suffering through the middle? That's where I was for months and months with the current book, but, praise Agatha, I'm over the hump now.

    ReplyDelete

This is a comment awaiting moderation on the blog.