Month: December 2023

At A Loss As To What The Audience Reaction To This Novel Will Be

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

On a structural basis, my novel is a lot like Stieg Larsson’s The Girl Who Played With Fire in the sense that the Big Event doesn’t happen until the end / beginning of the first act. It took me forever to figure out the structure of that novel…until I learned it was actually the first half of a much bigger story. After that piece of information, its structure make a lot more sense.

But other than having The Big Event be the thing that pushes my heroine in the the Special World, otherwise, if I do my job right, the rest of the structure of the novel should be pretty conventional. At least, that’s my goal.

My big concern is that it takes soooo long for The Big Event to happen that people will grow board or annoyed. And, yet, there is so much drama — and sex — in the first act that I’m pretty confident that people will be so busy reading all the spicy scenes in the first act that they won’t even notice that that many thousand of words have gone by without, well, The Big Event happening.

My heroine looks, in general, like Corrie Yee in my mind as I write her.

I, in general, like what I’ve come up with. But, as I keep saying, all of this is being done in a near complete vacuum so, lulz, I have no idea what the fuck the audience will think of it — especially some of the more spicy elements. Some of what I’ve come up with is supposed to be serious, but because it’s not hateful and scary…I could see it be as rather….uhhh…comical.

But I can’t help who I am. I’m just not as dark and scary as Stieg Larsson in my writing.

Writing This Novel In A Creative Vacuum Is Really Frustrating

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I have no friends and no one likes me. As such, all I have when it comes to this novel is my gut. I just tell the story with Stieg Larsson’s The Girl With Dragon Tattoo and The Girl Who Played With Fire as a hazy, general frame of reference. I have — somehow — managed to flip the script on some of the…uhhh….darker…elements of the first novel in a way that reflects my personality.

Instead of dark and scary, I do the same thing but in a consensual way that furthers the plot. (IYKYK)

At least, that’s the general goal.

There is so much sex happening the first act that I sometimes worry that it may come across as the mystery-thriller version of Debby Does Dallas. And, yet, because all of this is happening in a vacuum….I just don’t know.

And things calm down dramatically on the sexxy time front during the rest of the novel, to the point that I kind of feel uneasy that I come out swinning hard in the first act then everything goes normal for the rest of the novel, leaving the audience a little let down.

Or not. Who knows. I really do like what I’ve managed to come up with. The story is a real page turner, even if I have no idea what the reaction of the audience will be to some of the more….controversial editorial decision on my part.

YOLO.

Finally, Things Have Stabilized With The Third Draft Of My First Novel

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Ok. Things are rocking now with this third draft of my first novel. I’ve finally, finally, figured out some pretty basic elements of the novel that I can work with going forward. I’ve swapped a gender and changed the ethnicity of one character, but now I am closing in on the end of the first act.

The Big Event that ends the first act is growing even bigger and more dramatic by the moment. Let’s just say there my heroine has a hell of a New Year’s Eve 1994. And that’s just the event that kick starts the her push into the “special world.”

I now have THREE MEN interested in my heroine for different reasons and one of them I have to flesh out so there’s a point to him even being in the story to begin with. He serves a purpose in the first act, but I’m at a loss as to what he does for the rest of the novel.

I have a few options. One of them is he shows up every once in a while to serve a specific purpose AND his appearance in the last scene would give the story a lot of symmetry. Which allegedly, is a form of good storytelling. But the key thing is I have to keep my eye focused on what genre this novel is. If I’m not careful, this thing is going to be more just general fiction than a mystery-thriller.

It’s not my nature to go dark in my writing and I’m not really all that interested in *showing* bad things happening to my characters, so, I dunno. I guess I’m going to have to be really thoughtful in giving a lot of pagetime to the results of bad things happening.

Or something.

The general premise of the story is really, really good. I’m very pleased. But, then, of course, that could be the delusion that has been a the core of all of this talking. There have been a number of times when I’ve winced at some mistake I made because I’m doing all of this in a creative vacuum.

I continue to be concerned that just as I’m about to query this novel, there will be a perfect storm involving AI and The Fourth Turning that makes all my hard work over the last few years very, very moot. But I’m well on my way to actually writing a novel — a real novel that I can at least be content that I’ve finished.

Am I’m Missing Something? I’m Really Struggling With The Idea Of The U.S. Military Being Tyrant Trump’s Goons

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Jesus Christ. I continue to read a flood of articles that detail malignant ding-dong Trump’s plans for the U.S. Military when he is “dictator for a day.” The issue is — at its heart, the U.S. Military is a democratic institution. It just doesn’t make any sense that Tyrant Trump can order the U.S. Military to effectively be his SA.

The Nazi SA was a bunch of fucking street brawling thugs who would kick your teeth in if you stood your ground against Nazi aggression. And while, yes, there are plenty of paramilitary groups floating around the US at the moment — the Patriot Front being the one that unnerves me the most — the US of 2025 will not be Germany 1933.

It would take at LEAST 18 months for Tyrant Trump to organize and build out an American SA of no less than 1 million hateful thugs who would beat the shit out of people like me in the streets to “persuade” them to go alone with the America First agenda.

So. Trump and his toadies can pencil in “thugs TBA” in their 2025 agenda all they like — there would be a huge window of opportunity for a General Strike or a Woman’s Strike to pressure the U.S. Military to slow walk –at a minimum –the implementation of Tyrant Trump’s more tyrannical orders.

I mean, the U.S. Military wouldn’t even use tanks for Trump’s fucking 4th of July parade in D.C. because it would “tear up the pavement” and you mean to tell me they would turn into street brawlers at the behest of a ding-dong like Trump? Really?

It definitely seems as though someone hasn’t really though through the implications of all these nefarious, tyrannical plans they have gamed out for 2025. There will come a point soon after Trump goes full tyrant in 2025 when there will be a severe and direct reaction on the part of Blues against his tyrannical behavior.

I’m not advocating anything, just pointing out the obvious.

My Macro Plot For This 6 Novel Project Sometimes Forces My Hand As To What Happens In This Novel

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The ultimate endgame of this six novel project is a heroine who will be an American twist on the Lisbeth Salander trope.

I have the general ebb and flow of a six novel project that spans 25 years in my mind. And I definitely know how the macro story ends — it’s an open ended ending that allots for a new open-ended series of novels set in the modern day with an American Lisbeth Salander doing cool shit.

But there’s a downside — in the first novel, I occasionally find myself boxed in. There are certain things that HAVE to exist in the first novel so I can use them later on in the series. This leads to some situations where I could see an editor raising an eyebrow at such a decision.

I’ve decided to just say fuck it and not worry about that. The point is to tell a good story and if there are few elements of the first novel that seemingly are “unusual” because they are the building blocks of later events in the macro plot, so be it.

I just don’t know. Either all of this is going to work out great and I’ll look like a genius, or it won’t and I’ll like like a fool. I guess there are worse fates in this world, huh.

At Last, I’ve Stabilized The Beginning Of The Third Draft Of My First Novel

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Months after I thought I was going to get this point, I believe I’ve finally — finally –come up with the beginning of the third draft of this novel that I like well enough to stop futzing with. I believe I can now zoom through the rest of the novel at a pretty fast clip.

There are a lot of known unknowns, however. A lot could go wrong that might force me to either pause my writing or at least dramatically change the context of it all. But until that happens, all systems are go.

I still am at a loss as to what people will think of some the new elements of the story. A number of times in this new version of the novel I flip the script on some of the dark things that happen in The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. I’m just not as dark as Stieg Larsson was in his writing and time and again I have found myself interjecting a bit of levity in unexpected ways.

My goal for what I’m writing now is simple — produce an “alpha release” of the third draft that I can use as the basis of a much stronger “beta release” which will be essentially the same version but with a lot of the inconsistencies ironed out and the characterizations improved.

As all of this is happening, I keep thinking up various other stories I want to explore. I think I’m going to at least *try* to work on a number of backup stories starting at some point in early 2024. Some of the scifi concepts I’ve come up with are really original and interesting.

Anyway, wish me luck. I continue to hope to query this novel in the fall of 2024, just as AI makes all my hard work moot and the Fourth Turning causes the end of the post WW2 liberal global order.

Good times!

A Generative AI Equivalent of ‘Toy Story’ Is Less Than 18 Months Away

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

It is clear to me that the first Hollywood genre to be totally “disrupted” by generative AI will be animated movies. As such, it will probably be produced by some plucky startup without a direct connection to the Hollywood system. But it will knock everyone’s socks off to the point that everyone will realize that Hollywood as we know it is about to be totally upended.

We have to prepare for the prospect that it will be the arts that will be the first to fall to generative AI. It will be Hollywood that may be so completely upended that there simply won’t be any human jobs left. And it could happen far, far quicker than any of us could possibly imagine.

I continue to believe that this particular clusterfuck will cause a massive resurgence in live theatre, from Broadway all the way down to local community theatre. People may even begin to give value to such a human-created experience to the point that instead of watch an personalized AI generated movie in the comfort of one’s home, people will go out of their way to see live theatre.

Or something. I can’t predict the future. But this particular scenario definitely at least seems possible. It definitely seems as though we’re zooming towards something akin to a “Petite Singularity” within about two years. Or, if you really wanted to get dark about it — we’ll have a perfect storm of The Fourth Turning in politics and the Petite Singularity in technology starting in late 2024, early 2025.

There Are No Moderate Republicans

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

With all front-line Republicans voting to begin an formal impeachment investigation into President Biden, it’s finally clear that there are no moderate Republicans. To be a Republican is to be completely and absolutely beholden to the wishes of malignant ding-dong Trump.

This is yet another ping from a very, very dark future. While I know this will sound like my usual “hysterical doom shit,” it definitely seems as though we continue to careen towards a historic moment in our nation’s history starting in late 2024, early 2025.

Either we slide peacefully into MAGA themed autocracy by electing Trump or Trump loses and we have a civil war because he doesn’t want to go to jail. Meanwhile, if Trump goes “full tyrant” in 2025, it’s possible that Blues won’t take Trump’s shit anymore and the country will collapse into revolution and civil war.

And all of this will be happening in the context of the entire post-WW2 liberal order collapsing as well. With the US preoccupied with trying to figure out what to do with Trump, the entire world will be up for grabs. With the US distracted with mass domestic chaos, you could see at least 1 billion people die as a number of nuclear-tipped frozen regional conflicts suddenly grow very, very hot.

It’s going to suck.

This is all a prime example of the old saying that you go bankrupt gradually, then all at once.

I would like to note something — most Republicans aren’t stupid, but rather craven. They know damn well what they’re doing in regards to impeaching Biden is dumb and unjustified, but they have a word salad they want to impress upon the minds of low information voters, so they just say whatever is necessary during their latest CNN hit to get a few key words shoehorned into the discussion.

They. Do. This. All. The. Time.

But the point is — things definitely *feel* like they’re coming to a head. It seems as though we’ve collectively decided to force the issue of the current Red vs Blue debate out into the open in as painful and dumb a way as possible. And, alas, as much as I hate to even think about it — this might result in a lot of innocent people getting hurt just because of “vibes.”

Yet racism, bigotry and sexism are all hell of a drug. So, barring something I really, really can’t predict, we’re totally and completely fucked. This is it. One way or another, we’re going to the show.

Get ready.

The State Of The Third Draft Of My Novel For Dec. 13th, 2023

A Review Of the A24 Trailer For The Movie ‘Civil War’

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I am very pleased with this movie because it will give Americans an outlet for all the bad juju we’re feeling these days about the potential fate of our nation. It is interesting, however, that the producers of the movie decided to muddle the scenario by not making it a Blue Vs. Red civil war but something more fictional. The fact that the “Western forces” made up of Texas and California which are the rebels in this movie has already caught the attention of the Twitter hivemind.

People are really annoyed that they aren’t being given a clear, more realistic scenario to watch. Everyone knows that Texas and California would never join forces in a civil war — but that’s the point. If the producers didn’t do some fudging, then they would have to pick who the “good guys” of their scenario were.

Of course, there WAS a way that they could be more realistic — have the story be more about how a Red Vs. Blue civil war unfolding being the huge drama happening in the background of the lives of everyday people trying to just live through extraordinary times.

But that may be too nuanced for what people would want to see once you introduced the topic of a realistic civil war scenario. Both sides would be enraged if they weren’t the “good guys.”

Anyway. I probably will go see this movie, even if is really bad, just so I can have a cathartic viewing event and also so I can judge the quality of the scenario.