Middle

One of the things I’ve been focusing on the past several weeks while editing Assignment Day is the beginning of each chapter. The book has 50 chapters and I bet I’ve changed how half of them start. What do you mean? you ask. I mean that the beginning of a chapter should draw you in, just like the end of a chapter should make you want to keep reading. I found a lot of instances where a chapter started soft. By that, I mean one or more paragraphs of prose or exposition, kind of like an introduction before getting to the meat of the chapter. I don’t remember where I heard this advice, probably from multiple places, but it went something like this: always start your chapter in the middle of the scene. It means starting with action. You can always go back and recap what the reader missed in the first part of the scene, if necessary, but throw them right into the middle. That immediately stirs up the reader’s interest and keeps them going. It’s a style that’s a lot less passive, and that’s what I want in my books. And so the editing continues.