Tag: Hollywood

Of Music And The #Novel I’m Developing #AmWriting



by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

As I keep saying, music — specifically pop rock — is at the heart of this novel for no other reason than the novel is really me talking about those brief few months about 15 years ago when I was both DJing and publishing the sole magazine for expats in Seoul.

I finally figured out a way to tell that story, but only as a very deep layer. You would have to have a fairly lengthy drunk conversation with me for it all to make sense relative to what’s going on in my mind. But tell that story, I have, at last, figured out to do.

So, there you go.

Because I really, really have no clue what I’m doing and I’m doing it in a vacuum, I have spun my wheels for months and months and MONTHS. But, now, I think, out of sheer desperation, I’m going to just wrap up the outline about the July 4th weekend and just go for it.

I have to write a first draft so I can have a second.

I’ve worked really hard for this, now it’s time to follow through.

Webstat Fun



by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’m obsessed with who looks at this Website. I spend an inordinate amount of time studying the URLs of people who look at what I post here, in large part because so few people do. (Though I think the monitoring software I use doesn’t get everyone — sometimes people obviously have gotten a link to a specific URL in email and I wonder how THAT happened, since it seemed to happen out of the blue.)

In all, it’s something of an addiction.

But of late, I really haven’t get very inspired to write that much on this site because it just doesn’t seem like anyone cares what I have to say. I’d much rather throw all my energy into developing the novel (my primary obsession) than writing for a blog that might get one or two unique views in a day.

I guess what I’m saying is, if you like what I’m writing here, see if you can get people you know from, say Studio City in California to look at it from a work computer. That would, like, make my day — maybe my week.

But, meh.

Once I finally — finally — wrap up the outline phase of development, I hope to be so busy writing that I won’t have all that much time to worry about such things. Even though, of course, I still will.

There’s So Much To Manage When Developing And Writing A Novel


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

A novel is like a machine with a thousand moving parts that you have to monitor at all times. You have POV management. You have tone and mood management. You have IP issues that come out of the blue when you least expect it. The list goes on.

But I’m slowly beginning to feel far better about this novel. I’m about to “abandon” Part One. It may be another 24 hours before I simply say I’m not going to tinker with the Part One outline anymore. But I’ve said that a dozen times before and it didn’t happen. So, we’ll see.

I’ve given myself a very strict deadline of the July 4th weekend. Whatever I have by that point, I’m going to use, even if it’s not finished. I’ll fill in the holes as a I go along.

I refuse to keep spinning my wheels forever. This is novel has no literary aspirations. This is meant to be pulpy like Stieg Larsson’s Millennium series. It’s not nearly as nasty as that book was at times, but it is meant to be read as a dark, serious thriller. I say that knowing that it’s going to be a struggle. I, my nature, am quite carefree and happy-go-lucky and having to be serious in virtually anything for any extended amount of time is a real struggle.

But I can tell you one thing — this novel is going to be entertaining, especially if you like pop rock music. To that extent, this thing should be a breeze to adapt for the big screen. A mutual love of pop rock music of the last 50 years is the glue that keeps several of the characters close as the plot progresses.

And, really, I should have attempted to make this a screenplay from the beginning given how cinematic it is at its heart. But I wanted to write a novel, so there you go.

Liz Plank, Jodi Kantor, Erin Ryan & Some Mulling Of My Novel’s Female Romantic Lead



by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I have spent a ridiculous amount of time struggling to figure out how my novel’s female romantic lead is. I know her appearance is inspired by Alexa Chung, but it’s taken a lot — A LOT — of struggle to get to the point that I have a character who can be a “Twitter liberal” for the purposes of the plot.

It would help if I, like, actually had friends, huh.

Anyway, I think I may have come up with a character that readers will like. She’s a lot more more a Liz Plank – Erin Ryan character than I expected. Jodi Kantor, while cool and all, just seems a bit more intense and reserved than I need for my purposes. As I’ve said before, if my win-the-lottery dream comes true and I somehow sell this novel and it’s optioned to be a movie, I see someone like Phoebe Waller-Bridge playing the character. At least, that’s who I think about a lot as I develop the character in my mind.

*I* have to want to hang out with this character to write them. Kantor seems like she would be always be quietly judging me for being the doofus that I am. I want someone fun and smart, not scary and smart. (Not to pick on her, but she comes off as rather intimidating to me.)

I’m quite please, like I said, with my female romantic lead. Things are starting to fall into place. I just have to figure out how to give her enough POV screentime so people are willing to see her as real and complex enough.

Though someone called me “both delusional and stupid” for suggesting there are “woke Park Slope Moms,” I do get the sense that these women do exist. I don’t know. No one cares what I do, why can’t I have a little fun to entertain myself by constructing a group of women who probably don’t even exist in any meaningful manner.

Had A Little Writer’s Retreat This Weekend



by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I had the opportunity to sort of chill out this weekend and think about the novel I’m working on. I think I may have figured out the “Part One” of the novel AGAIN.

Something about getting out of my rut really helps my creative juices flow. I came up with a completely re-imagined beginning. Now I have to work on the “Part Two,” which is essentially the rest of the first act after the Inciting Incident.

It’s shaping up to be far more “thrilling” than it was before. I also have a lot more room to develop some characters so you care about them when bad things happen to them. But I think, really, some of all of this is my storytelling ability is getting better.

But, as I keep saying, I’m going to wrap up the outline by the July 4th Weekend and roll with whatever I have at that point. I have a huge amount of reading to do. I must have 30 books to read at this point. I am so clueless about so much of what I’m doing that by the time I actually wrap up the second draft, the entire context of the novel will be significantly different.

Anyway, I hope to spend the rest of this weekend fleshing out the outline for the rest of the first act.

My Outline Deadline Is Still July 4th



by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I have no idea what I’m doing. I keep thinking I have everything sorted out with this novel, only to realize I sure don’t. Each time this type of “system crash” happens, it’s more painful and frustrating.

But the general concept remains strong. It’s just sometimes, I get a little too cocky and everything falls apart on a systemic level in a rather dramatic fashion. I find myself near tears, staring out into space, wondering if this is the time I give up.

Then I dust myself off and soon I tilde wave of new ideas roll over me and I finally figure out how to go forward. This used to happen on a daily basis. Now, it happens, maybe, once a month.

So, it’s happened again.

So, now once more into the breach. I have a whole fucking first act I have to rework because I realized my “thriller” had no “thrill.”

A Major Recalibration



by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Welp, I guess I didn’t have things locked down after all. I’m going to have to rework a whole lot of the outline I’ve been pounding away on because the it simply fell apart.

I had a system crash, if you will.

But there’s so much good about it, that once I turn things around in a few days, I’ll still be on track to finishing the outline by around the end of the Fourth of July Weekend. I’m really pleased with the novel, it’s just the learning curve is so much sharper than I could have possibly imagined.

And, yet, that’s part of the adventure of it all, I guess. Why you do it in the first place.

Locking Things Down #AmWriting



by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’m locking things down with the outline of the novel I’m developing. I still have a huge gaping hole in the second half of the second act, but nothing I can’t fix in about two weeks (I hope.)

I have a lot of thinking to do right now.

I have to figure out a way to have some of the scenes I’ve been thinking about for about two years. I also need to have, like, an investigation. Right now, I’m a little worried that things kind of drift and don’t really talk about the actual investigation that much.

But I still have time to change that.

I’m going to spend the next two weeks reworking and filling out the outline (and reading a huge amount) so when I actually start writing again just after the 4th of July Weekend that things will go very, very fast. That’s been the point of all this development, measure twice, cut once and all that.

Anyway, that’s what I’m going to focus on the next two weeks or so. I really, really want to change gears and start writing the first draft seriously around the end of the 4th of July Weekend.

My Webstats Suggest Someone Is Developing a ‘Big Chill’ For The #COVID19 #Pandemic #Trump Era



by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I wish I had the resources to do it, it’s so obvious — a quickie, updated version of The Big Chill set in NYC during the current COVID19 Pandemic. The plot writes itself — a group of six 40th somethings (and one younger person) come together for a series of COVID19-related funerals and talk about the modern world.

Pretty much all you have to do is find a decent screenwriter and some high-end movie equipment and you have a movie. It could be super timely and it would give you the opportunity to explore — and maybe have some catharsis — about the current fucked up Trump Era.

I say someone is producing this movie because twice in the last few weeks someone has looked at a post I did two years ago suggesting such a movie. But now that funerals are starting up in NYC, well, it’s very easy to see an indie movie about what I’m proposing popping up.

You could do it really, really fast and maybe even get a well-known actor to be a producer and pay for the whole thing as well. You need six people. I tried to come up with a dream cast, only to realize if everyone (expect one person) is supposed to be in their 40s, you’d have to think about who would play which character and I’m not really into putting that much energy into this post.

Anyway, good luck people who are writing and producing the movie I thought up two years ago.




Edging Closer To Wrapping Up Development On The First Draft Outline



by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I talked to a FBI PR person today and it was a lot — a LOT — of help. He really opened my eyes to some things I was totally missing when it came to the actual meat-and-bones of why you would read a story like this: the actual investigation.

He didn’t like it much when I mentioned The Company, even in fiction. That was a tense, awkward moment in an otherwise very pleasant and informative hour-long conversation. Talk about power. The Company is a very, very powerful organization within the Federal government.

Anyway, even The Company would likely get a kick out of how I’m portraying they and the NSA in this story. I’ve come up with something that resembles a Donald Trump waking nightmare after he’s had one too many Diet Cokes before bedtime after having watched the latest James Bond movie. This whole thing is meant to be rather pulpy and with a dab of magical realism to it than anything else. Or, put another way, you might see it as a Coen Brothers interpretation of Stieg Larsson, if you will.

So the next few days I’m going to plunge into the outline I’m working on. Hopefully, I will finally wrap it up by just after the July 4th weekend. I really need to root around the story on a structural level to make it clearer some of the aspects of the investigation and where things stand when the FBI character appears at the midpoint of the plot.

Wish me luck, I guess.