4.9 • 1.5K Ratings
🗓️ 27 June 2023
⏱️ 56 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
In today’s episode, we’re taking a deep dive into the first chapter of A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness. Join me and fellow developmental editor Abigail K. Perry as we talk through the first chapter of this popular fantasy novel. Here’s a preview of what we talk about:
[08:20] A very quick summary of the first chapter
[21:00] A micro-analysis of the first chapter to see how many scenes are present within the opening chapter—as well as how and why the scenes work
[34:00] Our thoughts on how the opening chapter gives readers plenty of clues re: what this story is going to be about (and how it plays on the global stakes)
[47:00] Final thoughts and episode recap
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Links mentioned in this episode:
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0:00.0 | Real quick, my five-day live challenge called Unlock Your Story is about to begin. |
0:04.7 | We're about to shut down enrollment and get started on September 28th, |
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0:54.3 | What Abigail and I both say all the time is, if you hear yourself thinking the reason to switch |
0:58.8 | or to add another point of view is because I don't know what else to do, and the reader needs this |
1:03.3 | information, that's probably not the best choice. So instead of just kind of succumbing to that, |
1:08.3 | say, what's a creative way to get this in from my protagonist's perspective, or use it to, |
1:14.0 | like Abigail said, build the suspense. Just a thought exercise. |
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