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Challenge 93 (original)

 (This was kind of fun actually.  I'm a fan of a Cozy series (that recently had 2 new novels!!) that's written in first person and main is a lady running a cafe.  I wanted to try doing a scene in first. But this isn't fanfic)

Putting more paper into the typewriter, I pushed back my coffee and began. This was the only place I could go to get any form of privacy and inspiration. I nodded to the waitress who passed by, offering me a refill or another muffin. Caffeine was the one thing keeping me writing today.  But I had a deadline to keep-  the newspaper was coming out on Friday and this article was so close to being done.  I tuned out the crowd noise and soft background pop music and simply tried to concentrate on the page in front of me. I had so much to type about the new library opening and little time to do it. Taking another sip of my coffee,  I let my mind wander a minute; to my beloved cozy mysteries and  how a part of me wanted to be like the main character in them- small town reporter and part time detective. But this place was closing in about an hour and I had writing to do. 
shivver: (musicspheres)
[personal profile] shivver2022-08-15 07:08 pm
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Challenge #93

I'm on a mailing list from that Jerry Jenkins dude, because he sends out great writing advice. He just sent out his "Seven Deadly Sins of Novel-Writing", and I'm going to base the next few challenges on them, where appropriate.

The first sin is "Starting with Throat-Clearing". He writes that "throat-clearing" is "anything that delays the real beginning. Your job is to get on with things, not spend pages describing settings or setting up scenes or unloading a dump truck of backstory."

As an example, for a fantasy story, you could spend three pages describing the kingdom and the castle and the forests, and the marketplace full of people... Or your heroine could be riding home on horseback as fast as she could, thinking about why she was going to be big trouble when she got there while passing the forests, galloping through the farmland, into the capital and through the marketplace. (This, by the way, is the first chapter of Warbreaker by Brandon Sanderson. Excellent novel.)

For your challenge today, pretend you're starting a novel. Choose a setting - say, Victorian London - and then, have your main character do something and let your description of them doing it paint the setting for you.