“We write both from and toward–from what has previously happened and toward the payoff for the promise we’ve made.”

This was my favorite quote from the chapter, and one of my favorite takeaways from the book as a whole. Shannon did a beautiful job talking about the concept of promises we make last Friday with her post, Five Promises You Make To The Reader.

One of the many reasons the Harry Potter series is so satisfying to read over and over and over is that J. K. Rowling fantastically maintained story continuity and fulfilled promises we didn’t even know she was making.

But like Mr. James talks about in the chapter, that kind of continuity doesn’t happen by accident. Lots of writers lean on outlining as a safeguard in hopes that they can keep continuity, but the real seamless storytelling magic really does only happen with the process Mr. James talked about: Constantly reviewing what you’ve already written to inform what you will write next.

Another quote from the chapter that I really liked was:

“Editing is not ‘keeping the good stuff,’ and ‘taking out the bad stuff.’ Editing is leaving out everything except the contextually essential stuff.”

Of course, editing well means understand what is contextually essential. This is one of the reasons why “identifying the core of my story” has become critical in my pre-writing process.

At it’s core, The Lost Girl of Astor Street is about Piper trying to figure out what happened to Lydia. What that meant to me as an author is that every scene needed to be about that or it didn’t belong in the book.

Do you know what your story is about at its core? And if you read the chapter, what stuck out to you?