by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
As I’ve said before, the second draft of the novel came in at 81,000 words. I allotted myself ~100,000 words, so I’ve gamed out a whole new beginning for the novel with 20,000 additional words in mind. My only fear is that not a lot goes on, in real terms, during all those additional scenes.
I am reminded of how the first 135 pages of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is all backstory, data dumps and other boring shit. Not a lot goes on. After all of that is finished, the story goes really, really fast. I’m not a famous Swedish journalist, so I really can’t afford to do that. And, yet, I have come up with a number of really interesting, sexxy plot points that hopefully — hopefully — will keep people reading despite the lack of action.
That’s the goal, at least.
And this doesn’t even begin to address how I’ve decided to completely re-write the third act on a structural basis. What I have now just doesn’t work for a number of reasons and I desperately need to rethink it. And the midpoint of the story isn’t all that great, either.
Thankfully, I’ve given myself another year before I start querying. As such, I have considerable slack in the process. But I also want to start working on a back up scifi novel. I have two strong scifi novel concepts rolling around in my mind that I need to start to really sink my teeth into.
Anyway. I’m not getting any younger. I could drop dead of a heart attack or stroke pretty much any moment. AND, of course, there is the cold, hard fact that Something Bad is going to happen in late 2024, early 2025 just as I’m struggling with querying.
