Right now I’m smack dab in the middle of the beginning of my story. That’s right, I started backwards. Well that’s not true exactly. I actually started in the middle. I wrote a few scenes here and there about my characters already a month in to their relationship. Then I wrote how they met and got through that first month. I still haven’t written the second month, or the conclusion, and I’m just now writing the beginning. But don’t we all know that it’s the middle of a story that matters? It’s what happens between birth and death that makes it interesting, whether it’s literally life, a relationship, a vacation, or a book.

So now I’m at the beginning and I’m laying groundwork for how my characters find each other over the Atlantic Ocean. And I’m developing their personalities, so that separately they turn into people that will behave a particular way when they do meet. I was dreading this task for a long time, but now that I’m in it, I’m actually really enjoying it. Developing Renata is a lot of fun, and it’s so important to the story. When something really bad happens to Renata, she transforms into a new person. Without transforming, she would have never met Ryan, and even if she had, he would not have felt as strongly attracted to her as he does. But her transformation also works against her in their relationship, since she has a hard time trusting in his love. And the same goes for Ryan. He too undergoes a transformation in parallel to hers that changes his life completely, allows him to meet Renata, and also works against him in their relationship.

Obviously, I’m encountering the exposition obstacle. How does an author do it without being completely subtle in an obvious way or just completely obvious (“My name is Renata, I live in Seattle, am divorced, 28, and like marshmallows”)? I’m trying my hardest to make it fit in naturally, so that the story flows. I’m trying to think of it in terms of how someone actually gets to know a person when they meet. You don’t get the whole story up front. So bits and pieces get revealed through the first few chapters. We’ll see if that’s successful. I think one of my worries is that a reader won’t successfully “see” my characters. I see Renata and Ryan in my head all the time. I see their surroundings, their homes, their clothes, their facial expression, everything! I often forget that a reader doesn’t have the same vision, and that if it’s important to me that a reader sees these characters as I see them, then I need to provide more details about their appearance and their setting. I’m still not sure if it is important to me though. One thing I love about reading is the image I develop in my head. It’s like I’m there and sometimes I get a little miffed when the author disputes that image. So I think a balance is fair.

Anyway, since finishing my book is one of my goals for 2009, I’m a little bit surprised that it’s already June and I’m not nearly where I want to be with it. I obviously need to spend some quality time working on it and not just dabble with it here and there.