Tag: Hollywood

I Need To Study ‘Mare Of Easttown’


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Even though the first episode of this limited series opens with a very lazy “heroine wakes up” trope, the first episode of “Mare of Easttown” is very inspirational because it’s very character driven. The two novels that I have added to this series have a different dynamic than the last two novels in the series and, as such, I have to lean into the characters.

But there’s a problem — I have a very narrow, passive method of content consumption. So I have to go outside my comfort zone and watch a series that makes me uncomfortable in how dark it is. Thankfully, I can buy the series episode by episode so I can push through it without becoming too upset.

And, yet, I really need to do this. Mare of Easttown is very character driven in the context of the plot and the series’ setting of tone is very engaging. And the two additional novels I’ve come up with would gain a lot from me studying both character and tone development.

Or, to put it another way — for the time being, I have huge holes in my outlines and the only way I can think of to fill those holes is to put scenes in that help with character development.

Also, the two additional novels are not as obviously in the thriller genre. The issues at the center of their plots are more slow burn frustrations than running around in any type of thriller manner.

Anyway, I have set this evening as when I’m going to start writing again. I’m back from my writer’s retreat and it’s time to get this show on the road.

Mulling Having Working On A Screenplay As A Side Project


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’m quite content with the four novels I’m working on. And, yet, I still find myself creatively restless. It would be fun to have the side project of a Hollywood screenplay to tinker on if I ever get too frustrated with this huge series I’m working on.

But there are problems. A lot of them.

One, I would risk simply throwing myself into a whole different writing endeavor after three years of working on novels. Second, I would have to invest in book and software for this whole new thing. And, third, I would be starting at even below the current level of likelihood of actually being a success than I am now with these novels. It’s not like I live anywhere near LA, after all.

So, I think I’m going to wait until I reach some major milestone with these four novels I’m working on — maybe four first drafts?

But all this thinking about doing something interesting indicates I need to really start reading books that I haven’t read before and watchin TV shows and movies I’ve never seen. Something, anything to distract myself from the over all project I’m working on at the moment.

My Decision To Develop & Write Four Novels Instead of Two Is Working Out Well


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

They key reason why my decision to double the books in this initial group of novels has worked out so well is it allows me to do something different when the mood strikes and still stay in-universe.

I have all these great, great ideas rolling around in my mind these days and now I have an outlet to do something different while moving the overall project I’ve been working on for the last few years forward.

One thing that’s interesting is the prequels allow me to figure out how to tell a story that isn’t completely fueled by my white hot, center-of-the-sun rage against MAGA. These two prequel stories are a lot more character driven and very personal.

Anyway, I have a massive amount of work ahead of me. I feel a lot more need to just write something, anything sooner rather than later — when I finish the outlines to these four novels.

That should happen pretty soon, at least on a preliminary basis. I’m shooting for the end of July 4th weekend.

Axis Of Red Pill Derp — Joe Rogan Interviews Quentin Tarantino


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’m a huge Tarantino fan. I think he’s one of the last great auteurs out there, but he can also sometimes be tone deft when it comes to cultural issues. I haven’t watched all of his interview with Alt Right Lite hero Joe Rogan, but what I have seen is very interesting.

As expected, there was a lot of Red Pill derp going on between these two guys. I don’t think the average person appreciates how a huge swath of the young adult male population has grown alienated from the existing media narrative. In fact, on YouTube, there’s an entire on-boarding system designed to hook such individuals into getting “Red Pilled.”

So, while in Tarantino’s mind, he was just dropping truth bombs in the context of how he’s one of the last great Hollywood directors, a lot of young men see his interview as validation for their “women and minorities control everything” narrative.

Thing about all of this that is so aggravating is how difficult it is to pin down in concrete terms what things like “cancel culture” even mean. One person’s “cancel culture” is another person’s “well, we live in a new age where audiences really aren’t as accepting of the gratuitous sex and violence that Tarantino is know for.”

Red Pilled young men are a lot like most MAGA people — they are spooked by abstract changes in modern American society. Both groups can’t really articulate what bothers them, they just know they hate liberals. Red Pilled young men hate things like Kathleen Kennedy and love the earnest masculinity of Joe Rogan.

A lot of the problems in American culture are so nebulous and abstract and yet so powerful that they’re even more intractable than they would be otherwise. As such, I suspect they’re only going to be solved when the United States finally becomes a MAGA autocracy — or we have a civil war.

Either way, a lot of difficult-to-pin-down fears that people on both the center-Right and center-Left may have will become very, very moot.

Developing And Writing Four Novels Is Going Well, So Far


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

So, here I am, now working on four books instead of what I was working on — two books, one story. This is double the work, obviously, but it actually makes completing the whole project easier — since I’m working on all four books at the same time, I can create something out of whole cloth and plop it in the past if need be to help me get me out of a pinch later on in the series.

But the key issue remains — I have to actually finish this thing, no matter how many books there are.

I’m looking at these four books as one huge story that is broken into four parts that have plots and character arcs of their own. I think I may have reached “saga” levels of storytelling at this point. But whenever I get a little nervous, I remember how great the characters I’ve come up with and how entertaining the over all story is.

Now that I have four novels in this “saga,” I have plenty of room to play with. If I want to flip the script or do something different, I can do it in-universe and help the overall goal of finishing the books.

But, as I have been for some time, I’m completely delusional about all of this. This project has gone from me just wanting to write a novel to writing two novels to, now, four novels. I’m doing all of this blind. I have no idea if anyone will actually be interested in any of this — I mean, why should anyone care? But I feel given how crazy some of the stories out there are these days, it doesn’t really matter what’s going on as long as you have a coherent plot and interesting characters.

At least, that’s the theory.

Why Developing And Writing Four Novels Simultaneously Is Going So Well


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’ve been hard at work on a two novels, one story situation for a few years now. But it wasn’t until recently when it hit met that I had two prequels I could also develop and write within the same universe. After some deep thought, I realized I would rather go for broke and write all (now) four novels at the same time than write two novels then go back and write two prequels if there was enough interest.

So, in a sense, it’s as if George Lucas had balls of steel in the 70s and wrote and produced two prequals to Star Wars (along with the Empire Strikes Back.) It’s not a perfect comparison for obvious reasons, but it’s similar. The key to what’s going on is this now such a massive creative project that if I grow frustrated with one aspect of it, I can just go somewhere else and do some work there and still be in the same universe.

A lot of this comes from I now know how *I* write and develop a novel, so some of this happening really fast because I have something of a template in my mind about how to write a novel, any novel. In fact, the idea for two prequels really came rushing into the front of my mind when pretty much got the third book in the series figured out. It was then I was like, “ah ha!”

Being able to root around in the backstory of the last two books has also changed the story some because while previous I had two major events in my head, now they have characters and a plot.

I also think maybe making this creative enterprise double in size now really gives me incentive to go a lot faster and work a lot harder.

From my point of view all of this now feels extremely self-indulgent because, well, I’m drawing so deeply from my personal history now to tell this story that I’m a little nervous people are going to know a little too much about me once they finish all four books.

But, of course, they won’t know the context.

Anyway, wish me luck.

Novel Development Odds & Ends


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Some things I keep thinking about these days as I develop the first book in a four book (at least) series.

  1. Motivation & Writing Female Characters
    The better my storytelling ability gets, the more I find myself dwelling on motivation and how to construct interesting characters — usually female. I find developing female characters a lot more interesting than male characters because it’s so much more of a challenge to believably reverse engineer the personality and motivation of a female character (as male author.) And anyone who tells you to “just write a male character and flip the gender pronouns later” is full of shit. That’s a trite, pat, way of encouraging skittish male authors to write more female characters when, in fact, writing a female character as a male author is hard as shit.
  2. Gender & Hero Politics
    To write an effective Hero (Protagonist) for a story, they need to move the plot along. So, at the moment, I have my Heroine being rather passive at the climax of the story. I have come up with a way to make her far more active, but something occurred to me — there’s a reason why you see a lot of mom’s saving kids stories, but not a lot — if any of — of children saving mom stories. The implication is if a young man saves the metaphorical princess that they marry and live happily ever after. So, it’s weird to think that a son might save a mom from the dragon. But a mom saving a child (son) from danger fits the idea of a mother’s love.
  3. Writing An Interesting Female Character Is Tough
    I love to think up really interesting female protagonists, but given where all these stories are set, I really need to explain how is that all these out-there female characters could reside essentially in the same place when in real life you don’t often run into a woman as interesting as I’ve thought up. It’s not like there are all these Lisbeth Salanders running around Sweden. I have come up with a reason why these three women I need to exist would do so near each other, but I really need to think about the consequences of them being such iconoclasts. Men are socialized to be the Hero, while women — at least up until fairly recently — have been socialized to be the Princess who needs to be saved. For a real life woman to buck this very potent social construct would come with some significant downside for her on a personal level.

Waiting For The Muse


by Slhelt Garner
@sheltgarner

So, I’m now working on a four book series at the moment and there are gaps in the outline of the first book. I know how to fill these holes in the plot will come to me, but it’s going to be a little bit. I’m giving myself until the July 4th weekend to brood on this issue.

The more I think about it, the more the characters in this first book are improving. This first book — what was once a prequel — is going to be a tad shorter and more character based than maybe some of the other books may ultimately be. Things are still sorting themselves out on that front.

For the time being, I’m doing a lot of staring up at the ceiling struggling deep in thought about how to make at least three very unique — yet not identical — female characters who are extremely important to four books that span several decades. (Deep breath.)

All of this a huge amount of fun, but also a huge amount of work. I’m going to have to confront some fears. When I decided to reboot this project, I was just on the cusp of having the first book in a two book series figured out. Then, out of the blue, it occurred to me that I had the blueprint to two books set in the past relative to the story I was working on. And, well, now here we are.

Things are both moving fast and are kind of held up with this new first book. They’re going fast in that I know the overall plot of the story, but are held up because the more I think about the story, the more I realize I really need to dig deep for to figure out some of these characters that have been — to date — more just moods created as part of a huge backstory I had come up with for two books set in the modern era.

I have to admit that occasionally, I’m struck with a serious case of self-doubt. And, yet, the two additional novels I’ve come up with are compelling stories in their own right. So, I keep going.

I Need To Study ‘Mare Of Easttown’ & ‘Ladybird’ As I Move Forward With This Thriller Series I’m Working On


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The thing about this new first book in the thriller series I’m working on is while it’s firmly set in the existing universe I’ve come up with, the dynamic of the story is dramatically different.

As such, there are two stories I need to study — Mare of Easttown and Ladybird. The former because the nature of the novel I’m working on fits it and the latter because of when it’s set — the early-to-mid 90s.

The only reason why I feel I can pull this new, expanded universe off is the fictional events of the series hone so close to my own autobiography that really all I have to do is put the work in — the road map to success is right in front of me. It would help, of course, if I had, say, a wife or a girlfriend to egg me on, but lulz.

I have watched some of the first episode of Mare of Easttown and really like it — though I worry that portions of Pennsylvania are apparently some sort of dystopian hellscape. The (new) first book in this series I’m working on is a lot or more character driven than the final two books — which is a good thing. And, it may be a bit shorter than the other books, which is another good thing.

All of this has solved an existential issue with what I’m working on — I’d been working on the original two books in the series that I was feeling a bit worn down. Now, I can do something fresh and interesting while staying in-universe and building a really solid backstory infrastructure for the other three books in the series.

Anyway, I really need to stop writing about writing and start to read, develop and write.

Well, If Nothing Else, I’ve Created A Massive Creative Universe For The Novel Series I’m Developing


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I started the process of writing a novel several years ago. I had a general idea that I wanted to write a scifi novel. Things went well until my natural creative ambition and huge ego got the best of me: that attempt at a novel collapsed when I realized what I wanted to do was going to take me a decade and would encompass six or seven books — at least.

Flashforward a few years and I, again, realize I have not one book I’m working on, but four. But there is a big difference between what happened a few years ago and now. One, the universe I’m working on is pretty much a very gauzy, garbled autobiography. My writing and storytelling ability has gotten significantly better, as well, so when I took a hard right turn and decided to add two books to what had been a two books one story situation, it’s not like I was going beyond my ability.

In fact, things are going pretty well with these two books set some time before the events of the modern thriller I’ve been working on for years. But I have extremely high expectations for myself and so if I’m going to every finish any of this, I’m going to have to throw myself into a lot of reading.

I also need to recalibrate things. As I understand it, the late Stieg Larsson sold three books at one time — then promptly died of a heart attack — so I just need to accept that I have a lot — A LOT — more work ahead of me than I ever imagined.

But I’ve managed to come up with a cogent four books set in the same place and I’m still really excited to lay them out to an audience. I just have to finish sometime sooner rather than later. I want to at least be close to being a publish author by the time I hit 50 and that birthday is a lot closer than I day think about.

I’m doing all of this alone and in a vacuum, but I’ve made great strides in my storytelling ability, to the point where I can actually pull this rabbit out of my hat.

I just have to believe.