Tag: writing

Ugh. Word Count

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The rule of thumb is the sweet spot for your first novel is somewhere between 80,000 and 100,000 words. There is a chance that I may FINALLY have figured out a suitable beginning to the third draft of this novel and yet the first act has ballooned to about 48 scenes. In general, each scene is 1,000 words and so that’s potentially 50,000 of my 100,000 allotted words right there.

My novel has a Barry-esque element to it.
The first step is to just write the thing and see what happens. There is a chance that the whole novel is going to be about 140,000 words, which is about what The Girl On The Train is, as I understand it.

At that point, I have two options.

One, I could theoretically figure out a way to split the novel into two, self-contained novels. This would be difficult, but not impossible. This is what happened to my first serious attempt to write a novel in this universe. Those two novels are now the last two novels in what is projected to be a six novel project. If I did split this novel into two, that would really help me keep it being a six novel project while eliminating what is now the second novel because I’ve been struggling to figure out what to do with it.

The last option is to say fuck it and just try to sell a novel that is 140,000 words. The success of The Girl On The Train proves that it’s not impossible to sell a novel that is a little bit longer, as long as it’s good.

I think the solution to this problem is to just finish the third draft and then pause to take stock as to what I’m going to do.

Why, Yes, My Novel’s Heroine *Is* A Sex Worker. Now What?

The Curious Case Of A Lack Of A Beatles Bio-Pic

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

It seems as though the bio-pics of Queen and Elton John have been proxies for the big prize — The Beatles. To date, the whole subject of the rise and fall of The Beatles simply has not been addressed by Hollywood.

I don’t know how much of that is the lingering cultural significance of the band and how much is the remaining living members are very protective of the group’s legacy and simply won’t sanction any sort of attempt to document what happened.

But here, just for fun, is how I would structure a movie about The Beatles.

Beginning
You open with where the four future Beatles are just before events cause their lives to become intertwined.

Inciting Incident: John Lennon meets Paul McCartney.

You spend much of the first act showing the lead up to the formation of The Beatles. Crucial points of the first act would be Brian Epstein becoming the bands manager and Ringo joining the band. You would linger on John, Paul and George’s time in Germany.

The band appears on Ed Sullivan.
Middle

This would be the “fun and games” point of the story where you see how the individual members of the band reacted to Beatlemania.

Midpoint: Brian Epstein dies.

Crisis: John Lennon produces the “How Do You Sleep” diss track towards MacCartney.
End

Climax: Lennon is shot.

End: The last meeting of Paul, George and Ringo.

Idle Reflections On The State of My Novel for October 9th, 2023

Some thoughts about the state of my novel.

Once More, With Feeling

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Well, I have YET AGAIN gotten out of the first chapter of this novel. Now, I plan on re-reading AGAIN the second chapter to see if I can make it good enough to be considered part of the third draft.

I continue to not only do all of this in a vacuum, but to have no idea what I’m doing. All I have is just my gut and a few hunches as to what make a good story. It definitely going to be interesting to see if what the reaction of a professional manuscript consultant will be once I save up the money necessary to get them to read over the novel.

At the moment, the story is a mixture of Stieg Larsson’s original Millennium series and Bill Hader’s TV-show “Barry.” I have a pretty clear vision of what I want to do with this story, but it’s a much more difficult struggle than I could have ever imagined.

I still need to think about how to improve my characterizations. I’m getting there, but I need to make things more clear as to motivation. I keep learning — the forgetting, then remembering again — the fact that a passive protagonist is a boring protagonist.

As such, what happens is I come up with what I think is a pretty good plot then I realized — duh — that my heroine is way, way, way too passive and everything gets thrown up in the air while I figure out how to have her push the plot forward by doing whatever she has to do to get what she wants.

Anyway. As I keep saying, but for being 100% extroverted I would go radio silent with this novel. But I just can’t help myself. I sometimes need to vent about how things are going with this novel, over and above my natural extroverted nature.

It Happened *AGAIN*

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Yesterday, I suddenly started thinking about Seoul again out of the blue. I didn’t think anything of it — I think about Seoul all the time to this day. And, yet, today, I checked my Webstats and would you believe someone from Seoul looked specifically at the “ROKon Magazine” tag on this site?

It was all so long ago. I was very curious and dramatic when it happened, but it was a long time ago and nobody cares anymore. I guess? To this day, I wish I could convey what a fucked up, dramatic situation those few months in late 2006 — early 2007 were. And it didn’t stop there. The drama lingered until around my birthday in early 2008.

I still don’t know what to make of what happened in Seoul all those years ago. It was all so curious and mind-bending. It really changed my life and self-perception.

But, if nothing else, it gave me a lot of memories and experience to use as a stepping stone with my first novel that I’m working on. Much of what goes on in this first novel — which is intended to be part of a six-novel project — comes directly from what I know to be true because of what happened to me in the months that ROKon Magazine existed.

Anyway.

Idle Rambling About Alexa Chung & My Novel’s Heroine

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The only reason why I even bring any of this up is I’m a bit intoxicated and I want to see if my FBI agent monitoring me for any mention of Alexa Chung swoops in to look at this. Anyway, it is amusing to me that the heroine of my first novel definitely looks — in my mind — like someone in a fuzzy continuum that ranges Olivia Munn to Alexa Chung.

What can I say, I have a thing for brunettes with vaguely Asian looks.

Anyway, the thing about Alexa Chung for me is her personality. While it’s her appearance that catches my attention, its her witty personality that causes me to linger. I’m well aware that she’s rather vacuous all things considered, but, yet she still in interesting enough to make her my celebrity crush.

And, yet, I have to admit that as I grow older, the very idea of having a “celebrity crush” seems rather…quaint. I just don’t care. Any potential interaction with someone like Ms. Chung I want to happen on my own terms after I blow up with my DJ money for having written a break out hit first novel.

So, in essence, I just don’t care anymore one way or the other about Ms. Chung. Live long and prosper. I am WELL AWARE that if any of her “people” became aware of my low-grade infatuation they would freak the fuck out. At the moment, at least, I’m the quintessential nobody.

And, if you really wanted to be honest, I’m the quintessential freaky weirdo nobody. I am who I am. I am — at least in my own mind — rather harmless, but, lulz, everyone is hateful and judgmental.

I Must Improve My Characterizations

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I have a lot — A LOT — of plot, but my characterizations in this novel continue to be wanting. Much to my chagrin, most of my characters remain just “moods” that have traits that come and go for simple expediency sake. That is something I need to change, big time.

That is probably — at the moment at least — the biggest difference between my novel and the stuff that my “teacher’ Stieg Larsson wrote. He was really good at drawing readers in by having really interesting and colorful characters that readers wanted to hang out with.

I’m getting there. My heroine is starting to come unto her own, especially given that I’ve made her have a “Barry”-like sharp dichotomy to her life. The whole thing is really interesting, even if I could see some members of the fucking “woke cancel culture mob” wanting to eat me alive for even doing it in the first place.

But, I get it. I’m a smell CIS white male. I can’t help that I’m not a transgendered undocumented immigrant. I am who I am and I just have to deal with the consequences.

Anyway. Things continue to move forward. I hope to get a lot — A LOT — of writing done on this third draft this weekend.

I Hope To Get A Lot of Writing Done On The Novel This Weekend

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

In the name of getting something done before I croak like Stieg Larsson did at my age, I plan on buckling down and write as much as I can this weekend. I often say this and then, lulz, I spend all my time either rearranging scenes or staring out into space.

But here’s hoping this time will be different.

One issue that is now at the forefront of my mind is my heroine’s personal ideology. People seem to really like that Lisbeth Salander had a very clear set of personal ethics and, as such, I want to imbue my heroine with something similar.

But I’m also very lazy and don’t want to do any research. And, yet, I think I’m going to have to just that. I can’t keep screwing around. I need my heroine to have some sharp edges. I need her to have a very clear set of morals and beliefs that the events of the novel challenge.

The most obvious way to do this would be to make her a Christian. But, lulz, even though I was raised in the Church, I’m not a Christian and I just don’t feel like having to look into such things. As such, I’ve given it some thought and I realize there’s another way I can accomplish my goal.

I think I may lean into her being a Third Wave Feminist some. Maybe. And, given what happens in the third act of the novel, I think if I made her a very strict secular humanist that maybe that might be enough to put a really interesting spin on things.

I hope. That’s the goal.

I’ve been using AI some to help with development. Sometimes it helps me lay out scene summaries really well. Other times — lulz. And don’t even try to use AI to help game out a “spicy” scene. It just locks up and says it can’t help you out.

I have rewritten and expanded the first act so much that I am going to have to give the entire rest of the novel some serious thought. I’ve introduced a lot of new, interesting elements to the novel that I am going to need to actually use rather than bring them up and then ignore them.