by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
As far as the first act of the novel goes, I’m just about to the point where there — hopefully – won’t be too much change on a structural basis. As such, that will really aid in editing and writing the rest of it out.
My novel is meant to be a homage to Stieg Larsson’s Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.
Once I reach the second act, then things will slow down again because even though I know, in general terms, what the story is, I’m far from locking things down. But the general “Fun & Games” part of story — the first half of the second act — is, in general terms pretty stabilized.
One structural problem I have is the first half of the novel may be significantly longer than the second half. I don’t quite know what to do about that. And I’ve had at least one Reader suggest that my chapters are too long. While I understand where the person is coming from, they were the only person to complain about the length of the first chapter and Stieg Larsson’s chapters were about the same length — if not longer — than what I showed them.
And, really, shit to do with chapters is something that can be figured out in post-sale, post-production.
I just need to get the story done. And the word count is something I really worry about at the moment. I hope that I can come in at no more than 140,000 words — the length of The Girl on The Train — but I fear it will be closer to 160,000 words, which would be about the length of a Larsson novel.
My heroine looks like Nathalie Emmanuel as I write her.
But, in general, I’m very pleased with what I’ve come up with. One concern is how much sexxy time there is in the first act, so I’ve decided to embrace the issue by suggesting my heroine is a sex addict. So, rather than, being coy about that particular element of the story, I hope readers will simply accept — “Oh, ok, I should accept a lot of sex in this novel.”
The whole second half of this novel is in a great deal of flux. Especially in regards to the third act — I have only the vaguest idea of what is going to happen.
But, in general, things are moving a lot faster than they have been. I have to admit that I’m kind of embarrassed by how fucking long it’s taken me to get to this point. But, I’ve been doing all of this in a vacuum and that slowed me down a great deal.
