by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
They say if you have time to write you have time to read — or watch. And, now, 10 years after everyone has finished watching House of Cards, I’ve finally gotten around to watching it. And one thing is clear — I really need to up my game when it comes to my villain(s).
House of Cards
I don’t really show my villains that much and I really need to give their scenes more thought. I need to squeeze their hate out of them as much as possible while they’re on the screen — or page. The audience of the type of genre I’m working with — mystery-thriller — expects a lot more hate and nastiness form their villains than I’m showing them at the moment.
As such, I’m going to keep watching House of Cards and mentally take notes as to how to SHOW how hateful the evil people in the story are. I think some of it is just the natural transition from second draft to third draft. My storytelling ability is getting better and, as such, I’m feeling something of a learning curve that is going to slow me down some.
My heroine looks like Nathalie Emmanuel as I write her.
But I can’t slow down. I have to press forward. I’ve given myself a hard deadline of about July 22 to wrap up the third draft of this novel. That will be the 20th anniversary of my first trip to Asia. I want to be able to think to myself, at least, that I’ve written a mystery-thriller that I can be proud of, even if I then will have to piviot to querying.
So, that’s the goal — a finished third draft of my first novel by July 22, 2024.
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