My need to one up the author of this thriller I’m reading is growing white hot. The reason is, he’s got me hooked — event though I find the whole thing rather meh — and I want to figure out how to achieve the same effect in my four novels.
One way I’m hooked is I want to know why his heroine acts the way she does. Given that by the time I get around to the two novels in the series that would be the most direct in their similarity to this novel I will have laid out exactly why my heroine acts the way she does, I now have to up my game.
This is the fun part of development — when I have a challenging problem to fix in an interesting, organic and innovative manner. I live for stuff like this. But even with the novels that are vaguely similar to this thriller, I’m coming at things in a dramatically different fashion.
My personality and vision are obviously very, very, very different from the author of this thriller. There are some gauzy similarities in our visions, but some of it is just coincidence and some of it is form follows function.
That, of course, doesn’t stop me from frantically trying to think up ways to make it clear that MY series is far more interesting and unique than this series I’m reading. I’m kind of OCD about such things.
I’ve picked up a thriller that’s very much in the milieu of the four novels I’m developing and writing. It’s obviously, just like my project, very influenced by Stieg Larsson’s original Millennium series. What’s interesting is how different people take different things away from the series.
This book’s author obviously is leaning into the vigilante aspect of Lisbeth Salander’s personality. The novel is very well written, and, yet, it’s sufficiently different from what I’m working on that I don’t feel that threatened. The novel is, so far, pretty much a generic thriller that wants to create an American Lisbeth Salander.
The Icon.
I want to do that, too, but my interpretation of the Salander trope is dramatically — and I mean dramatically — different. In fact, now that I’m writing four novels, for the time being Mare Of Easttown is a bigger influence than Larsson.
And, I will note, that if you study The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, Salander isn’t really the hero of the story — that’s Mikael Blomkvist. The author of this book I’m reading wants to get straight into the story of his Salander-type character. And, what’s more he definitely seems to want to appeal to Jack Reacher fans, to the point that he has a quote from Lee Child in support of the book.
But a key element of Salander is she had a very weird upbringing that we gradually get to learn more about over the course of two books. With the book I’m reading now, we’re just plunged straight into the character’s vigilantism. One of the rules of thumb about writing a successful novel is, “Tell a old story in a new way or an new story in an old way.”
And, of course, there is the very real notion of “There’s nothing new under the sun.”
As such, I have to get over myself. If I was to come up with something that was completely and totally unique, a publisher wouldn’t know what to do with it marketing wise and it would turn readers off because they wouldn’t have anything to compare it to.
So, I need to chill.
It’s ok if someone has written something vaguely in the same vein as what I’m working on. It’s inevitable that someone would want to create an American Salander. For the time being, at least, it definitely seems I’m safe in continuing to develop and write these four novels. Each of the four novels is a very compelling story, enough so that I’m willing to throw my entire life into finishing them.
What’s more, the novels I’m working on are far more character driven than what I’ve read so far of this novel. From the first two chapters, it definitely seems as though the author is more concerned with the action adventure thriller elements of the Millennium series as opposed to the character elements that I find interesting.
Another thing — the thing that got me writing a novel — now novels — in the first place was my white hot rage against Trumplandia. That rage was always the thing that generated the energy necessary for me to write a novel. That need to address the bullshit of the Trump Era is another thing that definitely makes what I’m working on different than this book.
I’m obviously working against the headwinds of being older, not being formally educated in creative writing and not having gone to an Ivy League school, but lulz, fuck the haters.
The thing about the Escape From movies is they are much beloved, but they’re also ripe for a reboot. As I recall, at the end of Escape From LA, the world came to an end, so, lulz.
So, I would take the general conceit of the movies and make the first movie in a new franchise — staring Jennifer Lawrence as a female Snake Plissken, natch — would be Escape From America. In this movie, Trump finally got his fucking wall — a real wall, not the dumb fence he wanted to call a wall — and our intrepid protagonist has to escape from the United States by getting over the wall.
It would be so cool!
You could have all the guards and maintenance crew of the wall be Mexican. You could root around in the practical implications of such a fucking dumb idea becoming reality.
First, let me say I loved Mare of Easttown. It definitely made me sit up and take notice. I realized I needed to up my game a great deal if I was competing against it in my genre and for the attention of the audience. But here is a general overview of what I thought about it.
Let me be note that I generally walk out out of movies — almost all the time — so for me to finish an entire TV series is a pretty big deal for me. Anyway, here we go.
There is so much to love about this story. In fact, my only quibble from a story telling point of view is how the show begins — Mare wakes up. This is poor storytelling — the protagonist waking up as the beginning scene. Better to have protagonist doing something at a point where their life changes in some way. This is not a hard, fast rule, but, in general, just to have them wake up is lazy, lazy, lazy.
But other than that, I was extremely impressed with the story on a structural level. It was well written and executed. I found the ending organic to the story and not contrived at all.
Though, the last two episodes did get a bit confusing for me. They should have been a bit more clear as to what, exactly the whole plot on the part of the people protecting the killer was. Maybe add a tick-tock of the exact events of that night. We came close to one at one point, but it was I don’t remember there being an accurate tick-tock with flashback included.
In general, however, Mare of Easttown really forced me to sit up and take notice. Like I said, I have to up may game. It startled me so much that I decided to have something of creative re-set for the rest of August. I’m just going to read and develop for a few weeks and then throw myself back into things at the start of September.
Hopefully, I will have four solid outlines by that point.
I’m a reasonable good singer and often delusional enough to put myself in situations that I probably shouldn’t, so I on a lark was going to attempt to do American Idol. I was, that is, until I discovered the cut off year for participating is 1992.
I’m about 20 years too old to do it.
Write, write, write.
If you’re an unmarried man without children like I am at the moment, you don’t really have and aging rituals to mark your entry into middle age. Sure, there’s the issue of chatting up a young woman at a bar, only to learn she’s 24, but this American Idol thing has really rattled my cage.
The reason is, it definitely reminds me of the context of the novels I’m developing and writing. By the time I actually finish them — which, I hope, will be in about a year — my age in itself, will be part of the “story” behind the story.
Even if my dreams come true and I successfully sell all four books and they become popular, I may find myself answering the question, “So, how does it feel to be a success later in life,” a lot. Ugh.
And, yet, the whole point of this huge creative project was to give myself a huge creative project to finish before — gulp — I reached a certain age milestone. That has not changed. I had no idea the learning curve for writing a novel, much less four, would be so sharp.
But things are going really well.
I’m changing focus until the end of August — I’m doing more reading and developing than trying to write — and that’s really helping to clear my mind some. Giving myself a few weeks of breathing room to reflect on the saga so when I start writing again in September, things should move extremely fast.
That, at least, is the idea.
Some of what’s going on is I need to get a better handle on the whole thing so I can just go straight through the outline without fear of it collapsing. If I can reach that level of stability with all four outlines, then I will be well on my way to wrapping up the first drafts of the four novels a lot sooner than anyone might expect.
This is a huge fucking project and I love it. The sheer size and scope of this project perfect fits my personality. I’ll put a move on you, no matter how old I may be….
The book that inspired my now three-year obsession was Stieg Larsson’s The Girl Who Played With Fire. I knew I had a lot to say about the Trump Era and after some fits and starts, I decided to try to think up an American Lisbeth Salander in that context.
That was a long time ago and the whole thing has changed dramatically. Now I have four compelling stories all set in the same universe that pretty much are the origin story for something akin to an American female James Bond. (Sorta.) It’s not a one-to-one, but rather than the vigilante like Salander, my character has, by the end of the series (which paves the way for a series of books about her new life) something bigger than her.
Mare of Easttown
Anyway.
Having watched Mare of Easttown, I realize that these four books really need an infusion of character. Things are going really well, but Mare of Easttown is forcing me to up my game. I have a small library of books to read as soon as possible.
But given what’s going on in most of these four books, I really, really need to mull made the show such a great story. The novels in my head definitely share some of the themes of Mare of Eattown and it’s just a matter of figuring out how to take them to the next level.
The key thing is to stop writing about writing and to actually start to write. But I’m something of a development obessive, so it just takes time to get to the point where I can start writing without living in fear that everything is going to collapse AGAIN.
For a very specific personal reason, I’m kind of locked in neutral for a few days and I’m using that time to throw myself into development. I’m hoping that maybe I even dig around the outline of the second book in a big way by the time I get back to writing on the first novel.
I was really impressed with Mare Of Easttown. In fact, for a moment near the end, I almost had a Brian Wilson listens to Sargent Pepper’s come-to-Jesus-moment.
This quickly passed, however.
They say if you have time to write, you have to time to read (and watch.) After my I overcame my shock as to how similar — in a vague way — my four novel series was to the show, I started to plot. (Literally and figurative.)
Now that I’ve gotten my wits again, I realize my series is same same but different to Mare of Easttown. This is good because on a marketing level you could say, “If you liked Mare of Easttown, you’ll LOVE this…”
But, of course, it will be so long in the future before I get to that point that Mare Of Easttown could be in its second (or third!) season by that point.
I’m making my way through Mare of Easttown and the last episode I saw, “Poor Sisyphus,” really kind of rocked my world. I was NOT expecting that ending. Given that there are half a dozen Era of Great TV shows I haven’t watched, should I ever get around to watching them I’m going to be a bit forlorn because I won’t have anyone to talk to them about them.
Anyway, I’ve seen enough of the show to be able to deconstruct who its audience is.
It seems as though there are maybe three core groups the producers are tyring to appeal to.
Middle Aged Women It took me a little bit to figure it out, but all the adult women in Mare of Easttown are very relatable if kind of drab. Meanwhile, there’s a lot of male eye candy for middle aged women. And there are a lot of Every Mother’s Nightmare scenarios in the show, too.
Middle Aged Men This is more difficult to pin down, but maybe the fact that there’s girl-on-girl action between attractive young women is a downlow pander to middle aged men? Maybe?
“Woke Twitter Users” There’s an amusing overlap, in this specific situation, between middle aged men and “woke” Twitter who generate buzz. The subplot about the lesbian daughter is red meat for the buzz-generating Twitter users.
All these stories are really compelling — at least to me — so I’m willing to let developing and writing them consume nearly my every waking hour.
Book 1 If Lady Bird was a thriller with a middle aged protagonist. Book 2 The implications of Book 1 have come to a crisis — hero saves the day at great cost. Book 3 A Stieg Larsson influenced allegory (of sorts) about life during Trumplandia just before the pandemic struck. Ends in a cliff hanger. Book 4 We see how our female James Bond earns her license to kill. (Sorta)
You must be logged in to post a comment.