Finding the Right Place to Start the Story

Kaitlyn Dunnett/Kathy Lynn Emerson here, finally actually (amazingly!) doing some new writing. Of course it’s revising an old book, but still . . .

Back in the 1990s, after writing two books for the Harper Monogram romance line, I signed a contract to write two more. I had a great deal of the plot worked out for one of these books. Naturally, they wanted the other one first . . . and they wanted it in three months.

In those days, if you were lucky enough to be offered an advance for a novel on the basis of a proposal, you didn’t argue about deadlines. 100,000 words in twelve weeks was do-able. Whether or not they were particularly well-written words is another matter.

I had a splitting stress headache for the entire three months. It vanished the day I finished the book. When the editor accepted the manuscript without asking for a lot of revisions—her main concern, since this was a historical romance, was that the characters were separated for long stretches of text—I gladly took her word for it that the story held together.

Fast forward to my semi-retirement and decision to revise and re-release backlist titles. I soon discovered that most of the romance novels I’d written, both contemporary and historical, were sadly flawed. Fixable, but flawed. The worst of the worst was this one. There were plot holes big enough to drive a semi through, and only some of them were related to the fact that my heroine, a seventeenth-century woman in Colonial New England, was cursed with paranormal abilities. She experiences visions when she encounters scenes where violence took place. Worse, the victims of that violence talk to her afterward. In those days, that was enough to get you accused of practicing sorcery.

I’ve been putting off tackling this rewrite for months, but the other day I took a fresh look at it and at the notes I made for revisions. My goal is to focus on the heroine’s story as opposed to her relationship with the hero. To do that, I need to start the story not when they meet, but when she first comes into her powers as a child. Hence new chapters up front. A new place to begin the book.

Here’s how the original version opened:

London, 1632

Pain circled his eyes. The back of James Mainwaring’s head throbbed, and he wondered what giant’s manacled fist was clenched so hard around the scruff of his neck. All his teeth ached.

our hero, from the back cover of the original

For a long moment Jamie lay perfectly still, unwilling to risk the agony movement was cer­tain to bring. He was equally reluctant to lift his eyelids, but even without sight he began to gain a sense of his present surroundings.

He knew he was lying on his stomach, naked, his head turned to the right, in a strange bed in a strange chamber. He was very sure that he was not in his own lodgings in Coney’s Court. This was not his fine, soft featherbed.

The thin, uneven, prickly surface beneath him was a bed tick stuffed with damp, moldering  straw. The musty smell was not quite strong enough to make him nauseous but more than sufficient to discourage him from taking too many deep breaths.

Gradually another scent began to tantalize him, one that was faint but pleasant. His slug­gish mind struggled to identify it through a haze of fuzziness and pain. Rose water. At almost the same moment that he reached that conclusion Jamie became aware that his right hand was rest­ing not on lumpy bedding but on flesh. His slack fingers were loosely curved around the unmis­takably feminine swell of a breast.

Focus on hero. Focus on sex. Historical romance cute-meet, or meet cute, if you go by the dialogue in The Holiday. I always heard it the first way in the romance writing community, before I saw that movie, but I digress.

Here’s the new beginning, set years earlier and in the point of view of the heroine’s horrified mother:

London, August 1623

“Mama,” Ellen Allyn said in a plaintive voice. “The dead girl followed us home.”

I don’t know if this will stay the opening line. I don’t even know if this book can be revised into a novel people will want to read. It’s early days yet, with lots of revising left do do, but I already know that I prefer a timeline that doesn’t jump around. Flashbacks and dream sequences (not to be confused with Ellen’s visions) and long conversations with other characters about past events slow down the pacing. Besides, I want my readers to understand and sympathize with Ellen from the beginning. I doubt meeting her for the first time in the bed of a stranger achieved that goal.

Incidentally, although this isn’t a mystery, Jamie is on a quest. He’s searching for the lost city of Norumbega and has to follow clues, with Ellen’s help, to find it in the wilds of what is now the State of Maine. There are a couple of crimes along the way, too, and personal danger for Ellen because although today she’d simply be regarded as someone with a “gift” (or at the worst, as an eccentric who thinks she sees the past), in the 1600s she comes perilously close to being tried as a witch.

So, that’s what I’m up to these days. I’d love to hear reactions from readers of this blog. How do you feel about novels with flashbacks? Do you read paranormal stories? Does it turn you off when a novel starts during the childhood of the main character? Any and all comments are welcome.

Kathy Lynn Emerson/Kaitlyn Dunnett has had sixty-four books traditionally published and has self published others. She won the Agatha Award and was an Anthony and Macavity finalist for best mystery nonfiction of 2008 for How to Write Killer Historical Mysteries and was an Agatha Award finalist in 2015 in the best mystery short story category. In 2023 she won the Lea Wait Award for “excellence and achievement” from the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance. She was the Malice Domestic Guest of Honor in 2014. She is currently working on creating new editions of her backlist titles. Her website is www.KathyLynnEmerson.com.