Thursday, June 17, 2010

What's Your Point?

I am one of those people that will most likely talk too much if you meet me in person. Once I settle down, it's okay, I will shut up. I'm a great listener. You just wouldn't know that within the first 20 minutes of meeting. And it's not just blithe chatter. I talk too much because I start with one anecdote and it reminds me of a story I just have to share which then leads to me wondering why I started telling it in the first place, so I keep talking until I remember my point. Please tell me that my mother and I are not the only people in the world with this condition.

It's not too horrible. I mean, after a while people get used to it. After a while, I stop telling every past experience in life and listen to theirs. If you really love me, you just accept it and move on.

But if you're reading my book, you don't love me. You don't even know me. All you care about is the story within the pages, the characters and the plot.

Therefore, rambling is unacceptable. Recounting every past experience isn't necessary for the motivation of the current conflict in your story. While we desperately want to share everything about this character with you, as authors we just can't. We save those extraneous details for fun interviews or snarky blogs in the character's name.

Do you have a tendency to ramble in your first drafts?

4 comments:

  1. Hmmmmm....first drafts, though not of books, are my venue for writing in circles.

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  2. Yes! My first draft of my first novel had 30,000 words of intro... Needless to say, I did a lot of chopping!

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  3. Hah! I have to admit, I'm not much of a rambler. My first drafts are bare bones story. I usually have to add some rambling in on the second and third draft just to make them long enough. :)

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  4. I don't ramble too much in real life, and I'm getting better about not rambling in my writing - good point!

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