Ran into a retired novelist at a coffee shop last month

He saw me scribbling in a notebook and asked what I was working on. Told him I was stuck on a fantasy prompt about a baker who could taste emotions. He just laughed and said "cut your first three paragraphs, that's where all the fear lives." Has anyone else gotten weirdly good advice from a stranger like that?

3 comments

3 Comments

hannaht2914d agoTop Commenter

Okay so "cut your first three paragraphs, that's where all the fear lives" is SO specific it kind of makes me want to try it. But here's what I'm really wondering: did he explain WHY he said that? Like did he mean the fear of starting, or fear of the actual story not being good enough? Because I've had people tell me to kill my darlings before and it usually meant "your favorite line is actually trash." But this feels different. Was he saying the beginning is where we hide our uncertainty?

the_jason14d ago

It's the same thing you see everywhere if you pay attention. People will talk around something for ten minutes before they finally say what they actually mean, whether it's in a meeting or a fight with their partner. The first few paragraphs are just the throat clearing before you get to the real point, and he's right that's usually where the fear lives.

kai_bennett14d ago

It's the same thing you see when someone orders at a restaurant and then changes their order three times before the waiter walks away. They're scared of making the wrong choice, so they hedge. Or when you're at a party and someone tells a story but keeps adding "it was kind of like" and "I guess" and "maybe" before they get to the actual thing that happened. The first three paragraphs are just that same noise, but on paper. You're basically telling the reader "I'm not sure I should be saying this yet" and that uncertainty is pure fear bleeding through the page.