Fifteen Minutes of Fame

So listen, I'm sort of famous now.

I mean, not like, really. But kind of.

Here's what happened. I wrote out a story, a true story of a local murder, not something I made up, and I sent it to a popular true crime comedy podcast. And my god, they read it. They read words that I wrote, and those words were heard by several million people.

And now, all I can think is that I want more of my words to reach more millions of people. Guess I'd better get that novel finished.

So what's stopping me? Mostly me.

I was recently reminded of the importance of starting a story in the right place. You want to start it at late as possible, as close to something interesting and relevant as possible. You want to get to the point as soon as you can, and not waste time and chapters on leadup and backstory.

I was thinking that I had way too much junk before anyone gets murdered. But I just looked, and as it stands right now, it's at about 2,700 words that we learn about the first death. If I had proper chapters with proper chapter lengths, that would actually be at the end of Chapter One. (Chapters are, on average, about 3,000 words, according to my calculations.)

But then, of course, that means that the first murder can't be the Inciting Incident, because that should be at about 10,000 words in. So what is the Inciting Incident, then?

Oh dear.

This is what's keeping me from writing this damn thing. I want to do it right, so I don't have to start the next draft over from scratch like I'm doing now. Side Note: If you've been wondering how it could take me so long to edit a story I already had written, it's because I'm not revising so much as I'm rewriting. I'm literally retyping the whole story from nothing.

So I've been doing a little work on the outline, just trying to figure out where things are supposed to go. And I'm making progress.

For a long time, I've been stumped by what's called the First Pinch Point, a reminder of the antagonist's power which gives clues as to the nature of the main conflict. I've also had this event of the Legume Festival that I didn't know where to put. I always think of the Legume Festival as being a fun and lighthearted part that didn't fit in the darker points of the story. Because I always forget that there's a corpse involved. And then I realized the obvious, which you've probably figured out from this paragraph. The Legume Festival is the First Pinch Point.

Things are finally starting to come together. So I've got some outlining stuff to work on.

I'll see you next week.