I'm writing a Fantasy novel. Well, when I say writing.... I had the idea about a year ago, and I've written perhaps 20,000 words in different drafts since then, plus a lot of planning. I've had these horrible things in England called GCSEs so I haven't been able to get down to it properly.
I have three main characters: Areia, Florrie and Ruby. They're all women whose stories converge as they struggle against the Renaissance-ish society in which they live which doesn't allow them to study magic. I've been trying to start the story with a little Prologue of a few chapters, set eight years before the main drama starts, but it's just not coming out.
Then I had an idea tonight: start the novel a year into the proper story. After the one I think of as my main character has died (Areia). She actually hasn't and would come back at the end... I could tell her story through a diary that Florrie would find.
The issue is that there are some really dramatic moments I'd miss out and only be able to tell in retrospect. Areia kills her brother and falls in love with her professor, Florrie gets a backstreet abortion and becomes involved in a ring of mystics... All this would have to be weaved in as past history, and I think I'd miss out on character development.
But at the same time writing it this way feels like an exciting challenge.
What do you think? Which would you prefer to read: a story in chronological order with some dramatic scenes and world and character building that developed towards the mayhem (poisoning the Chief Wizard, bringing down an Illuminati type circle, magically causing an earthquake, freeing dragons) and then concluded with a nice little epilogue?
Or a story that started in the middle when you find out simply that a young woman has been burnt and a group of other women are very angry and have been radicalised by this? We then find out more about the burnt woman through the recollections of her roommate (who becomes Florrie's lover) and the diary she kept, as events in the city become more dramatic, before the book ends with a dramatic battle.
I'm sorry this is really messy! I guess I basically want advice on starting a book in the middle having missed a bunch of important story stuff, or should I just knuckle down and go from the start?
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