Starting Off With A Bang!

Which is better in your opinion? Starting your novel off at a steady pace, and slowly easing into the action in later chapters? Or, starting off with a bang in the first opening pages? Typically most YA novels that I own all start off with some type of action to kick off the story. 

ATTICUS originally started off somewhat psychological and semi-slow, which didn't bother me in the least bit. However, in order to grab the readers attention, I have to place some type of conflict in the beginning. 

I'm planning on recycling some of my previous works (HELL HOUNDS) into ATTICUS. A part of me feels I shouldn't, considering ATTICUS and HELL HOUNDS tie into each other, but the opening lines of HELL HOUNDS would work well with the revised ATTICUS. 

Have you ever recycled your previous work into a new project? Did it work out for you or was it better to leave it as it originally was?

I tend to recycle various paragraphs, names, plots and characters quite often. I do this because I know most of the novels that I have worked on will never see the day of light and when I come up with a really good idea, that is when I tend to recycle. 

Out of all the unfinished novels that I have, there are maybe three projects that I am quite fond of and hope to one day see in bookstores. Even with those stories, I have recycled. For example, I have taken out scenes from NIGHTMARE CHRONICLES and put it in HELL HOUNDS. My original thoughts were to get NIGHTMARE CHRONICLES out to the public (with an agent) since it didn't do too well on Channillo. However, I'm going to leave that project behind and probably collect various scenes from it to place in other WIP stories. 

Back to the subject at hand: ATTICUS! I'm going to take the first major scene from HELL HOUNDS and put it into ATTICUS. I'm not going to create a deadline for myself when it comes to this story because I feel it's best for me to finish it whenever I can. Working on a deadline works for certain things, but not all. At least in my case, that's how it is, unless I absolutely have to have a particular project finished by a certain day. 

As I mentioned before ATTICUS is a combination between Death Note and Inception, but the more I think about it, probably Death Note and The Punisher. Yet, the world in which ATTICUS is based in is similarly structured like Inception in a way, which is what I meant in my previous entry when I gave the comparison.

That's all for today, lovely ninjas! I'll see you soon~