by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
The key element to this novel is I want it to be character driven. And, as such, I’ve come up with some new elements that are perilously close to causing the first act to collapse.
This has happened to me time and again in the past, but I think if I just realize this is a “vomit” draft that that won’t happen. I just don’t feel like staring from scratch just to accommodate some new ideas.
But those new ideas are pretty cool. I’m leaning into character in such a way that I think people will really like it. I’m drawing a lot upon all the kooks I experience while a wildman drunk in South Korea. To this day, I remember looking at some of them and saying directly, “You are like a character in a novel.”
Anyway, I’m trying to be careful about now succumbing to the urge to the urge to just scrap everything and start from scratch. This is a vomit draft so it doesn’t have to be perfect.
The only issue is leaning into character is setting off a series of cascading events in the novel’s plot later on that I have to accommodate. Since I’m no spring chicken, I really need to just get it over with and finish something, anything that I can use as the basis of a second draft, get beta readers to read then pivot to querying.
Thankfully, this novel isn’t front loaded with a lot of sex so maybe people won’t just dismiss it altogether and not even read it when I ask them to be beta readers.
