So I'm editing Voice of a Silent Fugitive, and rewriting the opening scene. Again.

I think this is the fourth time I've done that.

The initial version seemed too concise. Sterile, even. I was going for a minimalist style, but this felt more like it was read from a news report.

So I dove deeper into it, delving into the loneliness and pain that a prisoner of war would experience. And it ended up sounding mopey. Not many people want to spend too much time reading about a character's angst, even when it's more than justified, and I didn't want to use that as the novel's first impression.

So I put more of a focus on the Fugitive's backstory, and the symbolism that was born from it. I kept a lot of the emotion from the second draft, but the whole thing still didn't feel right. It just didn't seem like I was doing him justice as a character.

In the grand tradition of mute people who don't want to talk, he wasn't speaking to me.

A big part of the problem was, I've had a hard time pinning down exactly what he would be feeling during the opening scene. Fear? Loneliness? Dull resignation? Stubbornness? All of the above? In what ratios, then?

In the end, it's come down to trial and error, writing the scene in different ways to see what feels right. It's almost like the Fugitive and I are trying to communicate by miming, drawing pictures, and generally flailing our arms. Except that I'm doing all the flailing, and he's just folding his arms across his chest and staring at me. Maybe he's just pissed about all the crap I put him through, and this is his passive-aggressive way of getting back at me.

At least, that's what the voices in my head say.

Despite all of the above, now that I'm partway through the writing of the fourth draft, I'm a lot happier with the way it's turning out. I've managed to convey a great deal in just a few paragraphs, and I'm striking a better balance between the Fugitive's pain and helplessness, and his intelligence and unyielding will. I'm also tying in his lingering attachment to his comrades and cause, which I'd largely neglected in earlier drafts.

It's been a hard road block to surmount, and to paraphrase a quote whose source I can't find, 90% was written for the wastebasket. But in the end, I think the results will be worth it.

In the meantime, I'd like to invite some audience participation. What are the two most important things you want to see in the first scene of a book? What needs to be established or revealed? I look forward to reading your comments.

Have you ever looked at a picture or quote and thought, “That would make a great beginning to a book or movie!”?

I’ve got a couple of them here:

and

That first one would make for a great sci-fi movie, and I’m tempted to find some way to have a scene or book open with that second one. Someday. In the meantime, I’d love to see some more.

Do you have a quote or picture that you think would make for an amazing premise or opening scene? Share them in the comments!

YES! After all these months of slowly but steadily picking away at it, carving out little chunks of time amidst the busyness of building a business from scratch, the initial spelling/grammar/style edit of “Voice of a Silent Fugitive” is finally done!

It was kind of weird, to go back and read my own writing, and to realize that I couldn’t.

Have you ever tried to read something with an eye for spelling, grammar, flow, style, pacing, coherency, plot, character development, and tone, all at the same time?

If you can do that, good for you. As for me, I honestly couldn’t.

Spelling, grammar and style, I can handle. But to go over a story with such a fine-toothed comb, and still see the bigger-picture stuff like pacing, plot and character development? Nope.

I’m pretty sure it’s free of typos now, so the second round of editing should be faster. This time, I want to just read through it, the way any other reader would. If I can.

I suppose there will always be the urge to tweak it, polish it, try to perfect it just a little bit more instead of letting the story tell itself. Like trying to walk through a garden, but always being tempted to pick the flowers up and move them somewhere else. But if I want to discover how it feels to read the book, so I can know that the pacing, flow and character development are what I want them to be, I’ll have to find a way to let go of that.

In the meantime, I have a question for everyone who read “My Fugitive”. What is the one thing you would most like to know about the Fugitive? If there was one thing you could discover about his mind, personality, motives or backstory, what would it be?

Leave your question in the comments, and I’ll see if I have an answer for you.

More than once, I’ve seen and heard people commenting on how strange it is that children are allowed to see lethal violence in movies before they’re allowed to see sex. I could have written about that, but there’s another paradox I’ve noticed that almost no one seems to comment on, so I decided to explore that instead.
 
So... does anybody else find it totally bizarre that children aren’t allowed to see female nipples, but they are allowed to see movies based on the ‘gender war’?
 
Think about it. Babies tend to suck on nipples. They see them all the time. Heck, unless you were delivered via C-section, you’ve seen more intimate female anatomy before you were one day old than you ever will again.
 
I’d give you a moment to scrub that mental image out of your mind, but you’ve probably already forgotten it anyway. Babies are good at that.
 
Now, I understand that there are very good reasons not to show naked people onscreen. As a devout Christian, I believe strongly in the sanctity of all things sexual. But I do find it a little bit weird that nudity is considered damaging to children; if anything, they’re probably LESS likely to associate it with sexuality than adults are.
 
Inappropriate? Sure, by the standards of my culture. Damaging? I'm not so sure.
 
Now let’s talk about the gender war.
 
Say a child is watching a movie in which a little girl is not allowed on the soccer team because she’s a girl. Throughout the film, she has to struggle, first to get on the team, then to earn respect or even a modicum of civility from her male teammates.
 
What kind of message does that send?
 
It tells girls that they’re at an inherent disadvantage, doomed to struggle for kindness and equality, simply because they’re female. It tells them the world is male-dominated, that men are uncaring and bigoted, and that if they want to get what they want in life, malekind is their opponent.
 
It tells boys that including girls in ‘male’ activities is noble, but abnormal. Or worse, it may tell them that for a female to enter their circles, she must first defeat them, making her participation a failure on their part.

If she wants to be worthy of inclusion in their activities, she must first prove herself to be better than them, which might not sit well with them.

And it tells both of them that there are "male" and "female" activities - which usually comes with the added messages that for females to participate in "male" activities is abnormal and requires them to rise above their gender's norms, while participating in "female" activities is embarrassing and degrading, which implies that femininity is inherently inferior.

The fact that it's realistic makes it all the more insidious.
 
It has been said, when discussing the difference between sex and violence on TV, that violence is more acceptable because it’s less connected to the real world, easier to identify as fiction, and less likely to be imitated.
 
But if sex is easily connected to the real world, is more possible to imitate than violence, and carries a higher risk of being imitated, where does gender discrimination land on that spectrum?
 
It’s true that stories like this have a purpose. There was likely a time when such tales were a source of encouragement to those who were fighting for change.
 
But while discrimination isn’t entirely eliminated, showing ‘gender war’ movies to kids seems like a pretty good way to teach them the very same patterns of behaviour that we want to eliminate.

Boys exclude and look down on girls, and girls treat boys as their opponents instead of their allies. This is what such stories train them to do.
 
I’m not suggesting we forget the past, or the struggles that created the relative equality we now enjoy. But if we must keep reviving the ghosts of outdated gender rules, do we really need to show them to our kids when they’re young enough to believe in them?
 
If we didn’t keep the ‘gender war’ at the top of kids’ minds, would they even know about it to the degree that they do?
 
If we want to send an 'empowering' message to young girls, why not portray female success as something normal and accepted, rather than something difficult and controversial that the world doesn't want them to have?
 
So, am I out to lunch on this? Or does all this seem as twisted to you as it does to me? I’d love to read your opinions, so please leave a comment and share this with your friends.