One teaser, four opinions

Last week I decided that I needed to add a teaser of FOR WHOM THE BELL TROLLS, Book three of The Goblin's Apprentice, to the end of FAERIE. I didn't want to do a full chapter since all I had of book three was a rough draft, AND I hadn't looked at the story since I wrote it a year ago. I could pull about three pages into a nice teaser, which would end with a decent cliffhanger.

I spent about two hours tweaking and rewriting it, but I felt something was missing. If y'all don't know this by now, I'll reiterate it:   I love/hate beginnings. The key to a good beginning is to ground the reader in the story and character without telling too much backstory.

And, well, I tend to blather on and on . . .

Yeah, surprising isn't it?

Plus this is the third book in the series, but what if someone picks up Book three first? I want them to know about the magic, but how much was too much? Or should I simply jump into the story?

So I sent out an SOS to my peeps.  Three GIAMer's (my online goals group) and Meg responded.

Of course, I got four different opinions. Meg loved it, but made one small suggestion. Another writer copied the text of a YA novel as an example. Another made small suggestion. While the fourth one would totally rewrite it.

*sigh* this was why I don't belong to a critique group any longer, the differing opinions simply confuse me more. I wondered how J. K. Rowlings handled the series thing, so I pulled out my collection of Harry Potter books. Each one of her subsequent stories started differently. One might go into wizarding detail. Another might jump right into the story, while another told the backstory of Tom Riddle. A couple had pages and pages of narrative, while others started in with dialogue.

It all depended on the story.

A few things stood out to me with TROLL:

• I knew I had a problem--this is the #1 most important insight to this whole mess
• I knew I had too much narrative--Yeah, but I could easily intersperse this scene with dialogue
• I knew I had to follow MY STORY STYLE and not a YA example.  Sorry, but MG and YA are totally different beasts, appealing to seriously different age groups and maturity levels. VERY IMPORTANT EPIPHANY FOR ANY STORY TELLER
• I knew I needed to fix it before I uploaded FAERIE--another writerly insight. It's better to sacrifice the publishing timeline and produce a quality product, than to sacrifice the product.

With this in mind, I'm buckling down and rewriting the teaser of TROLL.  While that sits and mellows, I will work on my final edit of FAERIE, which simply means catching the missing words, stupid sentences, etc.

With luck my cover designer will also be finished--yep, it's not just me who's behind schedule--so I can upload the entirety of THE FAST AND THE FAERIEOUS.

Later, Peeps!