Category: Media

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’m of the general opinion that you don’t open a novel — or any story — with a sex scene unless absolutely necessary to tell the story. It’s jarring to the audience and…cheap.

I hope to present a heroine as interesting as Lisbeth Salander.

But, here I am, having a spicy scene as the last scene in the first chapter. I’ve done everything in my power to make the scene worth it from a character development stand point. But just doing it at all makes me uneasy. And, yet, given how much sex there is in the first act, lulz, at least people will know what they’re getting themselves into early in the novel.

I don’t know. I just don’t know. I’m doing all of this in a vacuum so it could be I’m doing it all wrong. Or maybe I’m doing it right and just done know. But I am having fun, regardless.

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

It happened YET AGAIN — I found a “better way” to structure the first few chapters of the novel. A lot of these problems come from how strict and arbitrary my personal rules about how to lay out POVs during the course of an individual chapter.

Hopefully, when I write my next few novels, that won’t be a problem because I’m going to play it safe — single (male) POV written in first person. Then everyone — but me — will be happy. Ugh.

But I THINK I have the first three chapters figured out. Now I have I have to see if I can game out the fourth, fifth and sixth chapters before the sun implodes.

My goal is to reach some sort of milestone by, say, Thursday. If that happens, then I can at least feel like I’ve reached a point where I can press forward into the second half of the first act.

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

This weekend, I did a lot of structural tinkering with the first three chapters of the third draft of my first novel and I think they’re stable now. I think it’s possible that I can now zoom through much of the novel — maybe until I reach the midpoint — because those first three chapters are stable.

I understand where relationship stand as the story opens, which really allows me to go faster going forward. It won’t be until about the mid point of the novel that I will have to again to struggle with some severe structural problems that will come to a head in the third act.

The third act is going to have to be totally re-imagined and rewritten.

But I’m really pleased with what I have so far with this third draft. The main problem, of course, is I had hoped to wrap the third draft up by April. Now, however, it looks like it could be as late as July.

For a number of reasons, I’m going to start to read, watch and develop more so in case some disaster strikes the main creative project, at least I will have improved my overall position when it comes to storytelling.

Or something. Something like that. I am very grateful for the unique situation I find myself in and I feel like maybe I need to show that more. I too often just kind of daydream and waste way too much time instead of, say, watching a movie that I might not otherwise watch.

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I continue to grow more and more nervous about this novel the better it becomes and the more serious I grow about getting it published in a traditional manner. My overarching fear from the start of this endeavor was to not embarrass myself.

My fear is that for all my reverse engineering of stripper life that I just won’t get some elements of it right and people will laugh at me. But, despite this fear, I have something going for me — “suspension of disbelief” and post-production.

The whole heroine-is-part-time-stripper element of the story is more about character development than it is trying to be realistic. It’s something weird and unusual about the character that — hopefully — will catch people’s attention and make them want to wade through a lot of not a lot going on in the first act before we get a murder.

Also, all I have to do is just get within shouting distance of being right — there is a good chance that if I get an agent and the novel sells that any really egregious errors in the stripper part of the story will be fixed. At least, I hope.

Anyway, things are going well — so far — with my latest attempt to lock down the first three chapters of the first act. I’m hoping that once that happens, I can zoom through a big chunk of the novel — at least until around the midpoint — and I can feel some satisfaction that things are actually working well again.

My dream is to have an heroine as interesting and compelling as Lisbeth Salander.

I continue to feel an urge to start development on a few scifi concepts I have rolling around in my head. Now that I know how to write a novel — or at least the way I do — I want to have a few backup stories to use in case something happens and I can’t use the mystery-thriller.