Tuesday 4 October 2011

The Lead

When we hear the word "lead" in reference to a book, we tend to automatically think about the hero or heroine, aka the lead character.  However, it's not only them that lead a novel, so do some specific scenes.

Few scenes can be considered the lead, those are the ones that will keep you interested, the ones that may tie all the previous chapters together, or will bring something to light that may have escaped you, or maybe it will begin a whole new journey that may not make sense at that moment, but will gobsmack you when all the puzzle pieces fit together. These scenes can be as short as a paragraph or two and as long as two or three chapters, depending on which road our characters decide to take us on. Either way, it can set you up to wait for the next shoe to drop, or give you a shiver or even have you scream out loud, "Noooo!".

I bring this up because that's where I was this past weekend. Two days of writing and each was completely absorbed in this one scene.  Why? Because it is the biggest lead I've ever written, it has every emotion flowing through it (it was a very emotional weekend for me... I cried a lot), it pulls it all together up to that point, yet adds another incredible dynamic, leaving you wondering and wanting to find out "how the hell that could  happen to Rose and Michael."

Have a great day.

C. Elizabeth

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