Story Comes First

 

I have been writing a historical novel about living in the Pullman neighborhood during the Pullman strike, and I recently sent it to my middle-grade beta readers. This is the first novel I wrote with a male audience in mind, so it was the first time I used boys as beta readers. The boys who enjoy historical fiction liked it, but the ones who don’t found that it dragged too much. One boy said, “the first chapter didn’t have enough action and I lost interest quickly,” and two mentioned that the last chapters were boring.

It wasn’t hard for me to identify the problem. One reason I write middle-grade historicals is because I believe it’s important for today’s children to know about their history. But my readers want a story, not a lecture. So when I wrote the next draft incorporating my beta readers’ suggestions, I kept that in mind.

First, I added more action to Chapter 1 and eliminated some of the information I had wanted to convey about living in the Pullman neighborhood. That information slowed the story down and was there because of my desire to teach, not because it was important to the story. So it had to go.

I also added several fights. The story still doesn’t show the full violence of the strike since that took place outside the Pullman neighborhood, but the fighting does add to the story while making it more interesting.

Then there were those last two chapters that even I found boring. I had used them to sum up the lessons I wanted my readers to learn. Unfortunately, they dragged the story down rather than adding to it. Fortunately, the previous two chapters had already done a good job bringing closure to the story. So after incorporating a small amount of material from the last two chapters into earlier ones, I simply deleted them.

The story is much stronger now thanks to beta readers who followed instructions and gave me their honest opinions.

Because of their comments, I swallowed my desire to lecture and put story first.