When not conducting my year-end evaluation, I spent most of last week reading novel excerpts for the Codex Novel Contest. It was instructive, actually. All those opening chapters and synopses got me thinking about the things I could do better with my opening for Petra Released. So even though I’ve already done a revision on chapters 1-3, I think I’ll do another before I jump into the rest of the rewrite.
This contest has also been instructive in another way: for the first time, I’ve gotten a sense for what an editor or agent goes through when reading partials. Everything I’m reading is at least competent. Most of the material is intriguing in one way or another. In many cases, there’s nothing exactly wrong with a particular partial, but there’s nothing sufficiently special with it, either. I’ve heard editors make similar comments in times past; now I’ve come to see the truth of it.
You’ve heard it before, now hear it again: make your openings sing, folks.
Here endeth the lesson. You’re welcome.
No updates for Write Club.
Back to the reading . . .
