I've been moving between two first drafts lately (my least favorite part of writing). And I've realized that a lot of my early drafting is me looking for the rhythm of the story (also the voice, but more specifically the rhythm of the sentences). I can't really go until I have a sentence that's my anchor, that gives me a model to hold onto while I write the rest. Sometimes it's the first sentence, sometimes not. In this case: "The fair was open into the night, but finally there would be a time when the gates had closed, and even the stragglers had been expelled, and the villagers had their village to themselves," it's a few pages in. But it wasn't until I got this sentence (which probably seems quite mundane to you) that I felt confident that the story would actually happen.
Another thing I realized lately is sometimes my draft isn't going well because I simply haven't given myself enough to work with. First I wrote this sentence "They had arrived a month before the fair began, after a steamer trip from Constantinople to New York, and a train trip from New York to Chicago" which was basically a filler expositional sentence but then on a whim, I changed it to this sentence: "They, with one exception, had arrived a month before the fair began, after a steamer trip from Constantinople to New York, and a train trip from New York to Chicago" ... and it felt like I had something to build on. Stories are often built out of difference I think--the one person or event or what-have-you that doesn't fit the mold. Might not keep it, but it's an indicator of where most of my ideas come from. From the sentence. As I write it.
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