Looking for a way in...

Beginnings are hard. Let's just face it - if you don't hook your reader in your first two pages, you don't have them. I imagine it's hard when you're not writing a genre piece, and once you compound the words "alternate history" and "political allegory" (not to mention "my heroine is a Neanderthal"), it gets even trickier.

I need a way into this world, and I think that's what's been giving me so much trouble on getting this started is that I've sort of lost mine. I mean, I had a good one three drafts ago, but I'm starting somewhere completely different now and it seems like my fastest way in is through the eyes of a sort of peripheral child character.

Kids are really great for exposition because they'll ask a lot of questions with near-total disregard as to whether what they're asking is appropriate or not. Th problem with child characters, I think, is that they also tend to become really precocious really fast, which translates to obnoxious. Child characters in science fiction get a really bad rap - see: Abigail Breslin in Signs, or Dakota Fanning playing what is basically the same character in War of the Worlds. Or even Jake Lloyd in Star Wars: Episode I. After a while, everyone just starts hating the kid.

Not that I'm actually planning to have this child character stick around - it's a major plot point that he doesn't. But I'm nervous to use him as my "in" into the world, which would explain why I'm writing a blog entry about not being sure about where to start the screenplay as opposed to sitting down and just writing the damn thing.

But as it were, he looks like my best bet right now. So here we go.