'Parole, parole'
- Italian song by Mina & Alberto Lupo (1972; English translation: 'Words, words')
The other day someone asked me if I am writing in chronological order or if I am writing separate chapters and then put the story together later. Good question! I did chop up the whole story in chapters and determined what I want to tell in the beginning, the middle and at the end of the story. The beginning of the book is important as it has to trigger the reader to read on. And yes, I started with chapter 1, continued with chapter 2, but soon found out that I had to explain more about the relations between the protagonists in the beginning (without falling into the trap of giving too much information!).
So I added a chapter in between and chapter 2 became chapter 3. The question of my friend made me think however. The last few weeks I have been researching the making of movies. A movie is never shot in chronological order, but in all different shots and then edited in the end. As a story has more than one storyline and several themes, it is very well possible to write a storyline that will show up somewhere in the middle of the book or even at the end. From today on I will have a good look again at those different storylines and themes to see what inspires me most at this moment to start writing on. This gives me a whole new perspective again. Thank you for that question!
Last week I have been struggling with dialogues. Not so much dialogues between the grown up characters in the book. Those seem to come pretty naturally. But if your protagonist is a 7 year-old, what kind of dialogue do you give her without boring a grown up reader? It can not be something very difficult she says at that age, but it still has to add something to the story or to the character. The title of the 1970's song 'Parole, parole' refers to hollow words and phrases. Even though I want to create a sense of time, I don't just want to 'touch' news facts without knowing the essence. So I still do research... a lot. Gaining much more information and knowledge than I probably will ever use in this book, but better that than hollow words and phrases! Love, M.
