{"id":894,"date":"2012-03-21T15:00:45","date_gmt":"2012-03-21T20:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/elizabethshack.com\/blog\/?p=894"},"modified":"2012-03-20T19:45:07","modified_gmt":"2012-03-21T00:45:07","slug":"dont-do-this-boring-beginnings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/elizabethshack.com\/blog\/2012\/03\/21\/dont-do-this-boring-beginnings\/","title":{"rendered":"Don&#8217;t Do This: Boring Beginnings"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Last week, Patty Jansen blogged about something she saw in slush: <a href=\"http:\/\/pattyjansen.wordpress.com\/2012\/03\/12\/from-the-slush-minions-diary-12-stories-that-are-boring\/\">boring beginnings<\/a>. I only read slush for a short time, and that&#8217;s what I saw as well. The truly bad stories were rare, but most of what I read was just not that engaging. <\/p>\n<p>Go read <a href=\"http:\/\/pattyjansen.wordpress.com\/2012\/03\/12\/from-the-slush-minions-diary-12-stories-that-are-boring\/\">her post<\/a> for examples of what makes beginnings boring. One type&#8211;stories that start with something interesting, and then have a second scene which backtracks to explain the first&#8211;is a bad habit of mine. Nearly all of my first drafts start with something interesting, and then a big infodump of backstory, and then a note where I tell myself to delete all that. <\/p>\n<p>I think I have to write out the infodump to reassure my brain that I know what the situation is. The key is to delete it in revision.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last week, Patty Jansen blogged about something she saw in slush: boring beginnings. I only read slush for a short time, and that&#8217;s what I saw as well. The truly bad stories were rare, but most of what I read &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/elizabethshack.com\/blog\/2012\/03\/21\/dont-do-this-boring-beginnings\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-894","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/elizabethshack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/894","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/elizabethshack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/elizabethshack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elizabethshack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elizabethshack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=894"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/elizabethshack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/894\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/elizabethshack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elizabethshack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=894"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elizabethshack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}