To fend off the hopelessness I felt while reading Le Rêve, I spent some time working on Cinquefoil, of all things. Cinquefoil is a novel I’ve been working on for a very long time (like most of them) and it may be the novel closest to my heart and the one I’ve felt the most anxiety about writing. It’s set all over 12th century Europe and the Holy Land, so a lot of research will need to go into it. During the editing phase, that is, because I’ve decided that I’m just going to use one or two books to build my timeline (which has to be kept strictly), and do the more detailed research later. Smart, huh? Took me long enough to figure it out . . .
Anyway, as I said, I was trying to fend off hopelessness, so maybe that’s why I ended up writing a bunch of scenes from the hero’s youth. I’ve debated for a long time whether to write those scenes, because they are exciting events and formative for the hero, but I know it’s risky to start with the hero’s childhood. I decided I’d just go ahead and write them. Doing so, I learned why it’s important not to start a story too early.
I’m glad that I got the scenes down, because they were jumbled up with the other, more critical scenes in my head. Now I can let them go. But it was easy to see, getting them down on paper, that they didn’t fit, that they weren’t part of the story I need to tell. There was no story arc connecting them, beyond the fact that they all happened to the same person and that they all led one to another. Though they’d seemed so crucial in my imagination, written down, they seemed like the hero’s home movies.
I don’t know what will happen to the scenes when I write the book; all the events really are important to what’s happening in the “now” of the story. I don’t like flashbacks much, and I can only have one prologue (if the editor is even okay with one). But whether any of them end up in the story or not, it was helpful to see in black and white why it doesn’t usually work to start at the beginning. I mean, in a way you could do that ad infinitum, couldn’t you? I could show his mother giving birth to him, or his parents meeting for the first time, and on and on. . . . It all matters, but none of it is critical.
I could show his mother giving birth to him, or his parents meeting for the first time, and on and on. . . . It all matters, but none of it is critical.
Funnily enough, I’m (on-and-off) reading a biography that is just like that — the author started with the subjects grandparents and great-grandparents, tracing both sides down. (I’ve been at it for chapters and I think the subject is just now being born.) Important to his being born, I’m sure, but I really didn’t need to know how his grandparents met, or even how his mother knew all along that he was destined for greatness (I mean really, hello, any mother is going to say that, given an opportunity!)
I think it’s good that you wrote it out, though, for your own knowledge and process. And as you said, now you can see why all of that stuff doesn’t belong in the final version!