There’s a famous quote from ‘Alice in Wonderland’:
“Begin at the beginning,” the King said gravely, “and go on till you come to the end: then stop.”
But I almost never begin writing a book at the beginning. I generally have to get a good way in before I start to know what the beginning must have been. My next Hazel book ‘Sisters’ is being more difficult than usual, though. I have 90,000 words written, which will probably be between two thirds and three quarters of the whole, and I’ve just written the fifth beginning! By beginning, I pretty much mean the entire opening chapter, and it’s still not right, or even close. The main problem is how to explain a complex relationship between two people who had both been through hell before they met, without boring the reader with huge potted biographies.
‘Sisters’ is a continuation of ‘Rachel’, but starts months after ‘Rachel’ ends and a lot has happened in that time. Some explanation would be needed even if I started the day after ‘Rachel’ ends. After all, readers might not have read ‘Rachel’ first and it’s a dilemma in any series: how standalone to make each book. But I need to skip those months if I can because otherwise the book will go on for chapters before the real story starts and that would be deadly dull.
Ah well, wish me luck. I’ll keep on trying to find a solution.