The advice usually goes something like this:
Hook your readers with action right from the start, and then…every single word, sentence, paragraph, and page must drive them through more action — until the end, when readers can barely handle any more excitement!
I understand wanting to write (and read) something that feels like this:
But the roller coaster novel advice totally ignores those who want to write (and read) something that feels like this:
And that’s the kind of novel I prefer writing…
[…] I might have even jotted down word counts, a thing I rarely do. (Because much of what I’m doing is reworking already-written content and filling in places where I skipped research in earlier drafts, word count would not have been a good indicator of what I accomplished. Also, I believe when people shoot for quantity over quality, you get shitty books…or, at best, this!) […]
[…] wrote about this in another Juggling Writing entry, once. If you don’t want to check out a short entry, I summed it up like […]
[…] I summed up my feelings about it all in this short entry. […]
[…] me, though…when I wade into a novel, more times than not, I want a little something more than a roller coaster ride. I want to be challenged…and the books that challenge me are often the books that challenged […]