I don't know what it is about chapter three, but it always makes me run in fear.
Maybe it's a commitment issue. If you write chapter three you are going to write the book. You have to. Three chapters worth of writing deserves some focus.
Or maybe it's that by chapter three my brain runs out of new creative ideas and demands some form of logic so I have to go write out a rough outline. I have to figure out the timeline, and how things work, and all those random details that I would otherwise avoid like the plague. But you need them after chapter three or the editing will be worthy of Dante's wrath.
Honestly, it could be that I have the attention span of a gnat on crack and that unless the story is really spellbinding I want to chase after other shiny ideas, not do the outlines and plotting I need for chapter three.
Whatever the case is... I made past chapter three on Book 4. I was very proud of myself. Then I hit chapter seven and started to (metaphorically) cry. Mostly because I think that several scenes I wrote, while being very good, are utterly useless and will have to get chopped. That's a depressing realization. But there it is.
Rough drafts suck. There's no way around it.
*opens document and sighs heavily*
This means chapter seven is really Chapter 3. I'm going to have to cut stuff. And Chapter 3 is still cursed.
A friend of mine who's been an editor for a long time, told me that the reason why publishers and agents usually ask for the first three chatpers is because they know the story will start somewhere within that frame.
ReplyDeleteSo maybe chapter three is cursed because either you figure out the core of the story by that chapter... or you're in big troubles ;-)
That's probably it. Even when I know the basic idea of the book and the ending, chapter 3 is hard. It's a monster!
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