Even though I didn't fulfill my goal to complete at least 50K words for NaNoWri this year, I was excited by what I had in my latest African American romance. So in my excitement I posted my first chapter to a three of my critique groups this week.
Oh boy, what a rude awakening I got!
A majority of the reviewers so far were bored by what I considered an exciting, emotion-fulled opening: an argument between a financially challenged, overwrought single mother and her spoiled, rebellious teenage daughter. Only later in the scene do I put my hero and heroine in the same room. The consensus was that I needed to skip the argument for now and get to the interaction between my hero and heroine sooner.
Humph! I thought the tension between mother and daughter was a nifty way to exemplify the stresses in the heroine's life. I saw comments like "boring," "get to the point," "story should start later," and "who cares?" After reading all the comments - and I haven't absorbed them all - the lesson I learned this week is:
Don't fall in love with your own work.
Not that I have to nix the parent-child argument, typical in most household. I received many suggestions to use it later, particularly after letting the reader get connected with the heroine and care about what she is going through. All writers need to begin a story by putting their main characters in a situation that will let the reader understand them, how they think, and how they feel. Will the reader learn everything there is to know about the main characters? No. But the reader should be given enough insight to care about reading further.
Plainly, I had too much backstory and exposition and not enough dialogue and emotional hook. Very few folks cared about the argument between Bri and a spoiled Jaime, at least at this point. I was told that I need to draw the readers in so that they can "root for her because of who she is [and] not just because of her circumstances."
Granted, this was my NaNo effort, inflated with a lot of words to try to meet my goal, and in need of alot of work. But I was surprised by this flaw right off the bat.
Bottom line: Get to the heart of the matter and create an opening that neither a reader nor an editior wants to put down.
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1 comment:
I guess I was overruled, but I understand what they're saying. Lately I've realized that I think/write differently because I'm not a pure "romance" reader. My favorite stories are the ones that delve into the lives of the characters moreso than just focusing on the romantic aspects. Eric Jerome Dickey is a master at that kind of story.
No matter what you write, I know it's going to be great. Waiting for Chapter Two!
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