No writing happens instantaneously. There’s no shortcut to success. From start to finish you must make your choices carefully. You have to discern the story you want to tell, and take the time to tell it properly.
When your story opens, you are in essence making a promise to your audience. You are saying, “Here’s a story I want to tell you, and if you stick with me, it’ll be worth the time you’ve taken to experience it.” The audience agrees to invest their time (and, in ideal cases, money) with you and your storytelling skill. You, in turn, are obligated to tell a good story.
Not necessarily a story they will like, mind you, but a good one.
If you rush this, if you try to barrel headlong to a scene or, worst of all, a conclusion, the entire story will suffer. It’s your characters who should suffer, not the story. The events of the tale should include a variety of hardships for those involved in it. But if you instead make it a hardship for your audience to find enjoyment, be it on the surface of the narrative or in the deeper meanings they’ll inevitably explore, you can be damn sure they’ll let you know it.
So take your time, won’t you?
Better food comes out of a crock-pot or an actual oven than it does from a microwave. You get better results painting something with tiny, painstaking touches of a small brush than you do the wide spray of compressed air mixed with paint. The more time you take to get your story right, to bring your characters to life and make the audience care when you inevitably hurt them, the better the story will be, and the more inclined your audience will be to ask you for another one.
