Tag: Hollywood

Of Someone Writing A Screenplay Inspired From My Development Writing Online



by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I vacillate dramatically from assuming that, of course, someone is going to use all my development on this Website to write a screenplay that “steals” my idea to wondering, how, exactly, they would do it.

I guess you could get the general gist of the concept if you looked at what I’ve been writing about and talking about the last 18 months, but even if you did do that, your interpretation of the concept and mine would likely be dramatically different.

I keep seeing people poking around this Website in my Webstats and that alarms me because I assume that of course my worst fears are being realized. And, yet, really, the idea I am working on is so expansive and ambitious that a screenplay would be, by definition, dramatically different than the novel I’m writing.

If I had, like, friends and stuff, then this wouldn’t be an issue. I would talk to them about what I’m working on and I wouldn’t have this problem. My only hope is that even if people were actively stealing from me at this point, it would still take actual physical time to develop the screenplay. And the subject matter of this novel is such that I find it dubious that even if someone could somehow accurately reverse-engineer the concept from what I’ve done here, I’m not so sure they would actually steal the story beat-for-beat.

Or maybe I’m wrong. Maybe that’s exactly what’s happening.

But I’m of the opinion that you make decisions on what you know, not on what you don’t know. I could just give up and assume someone is going to steal this concept from me, or I can work harder and faster so at least I finish something sooner rather than later.

If you are trying to “steal” my story — fuck you, you hack.

An Unexpected Struggle With The Novel As It Grows Better



by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Things are moving fast with the novel. And, yet, as my storytelling ability gets better, I realize there are some major flaws with what I have right now. I came up with a very complex situation for this story when all of this began and as my writing ability gets better I realize how much work telling the story I want to tell will entail.

I have a very specific vision and I’m willing to put the work into this novel to make that vision a reality. It’s just every once in a while, I have to re-calibrate some pretty significant parts of the story, long after I think I have things settled.

But at least I’m recognizing these problems now, instead of getting all excited and showing it to beta readers, only to have them laugh at me. (Or, worse yet, to simply give me silence.) I’m doing a massive amount of reading right now to catch up to where I should be with this novel.

One problem I’ve had is I’ve been drafting so much off of what Stieg Larsson did with The Girl Who Played With Fire, that now that I realize my novel isn’t served by doing that anymore, some fundimental issues have come up. I really want this novel to be something of a “brown shoe” for readers in the sense that superficially, at least, it seems like just another thriller — even though it’s, in fact, an allegory for the Trump Era.

So, I struggle a lot with how to properly tell this story in the way my gut tells me to — I’m essentially doing everything in a vacuum. I have no friends and no one will help me, so all I have is my personal vision of the story I want to tell. I talk a lot about this novel online for no other reason than it gives me a socially acceptable way to talk to myself.

At this point, the only thing that keeps me going is I know how important this story might be if properly written. There are a lot of existential problems with this novel — all of them, well, directly connected to me. But I’ve been working on this thing so long that I think the point is to just wrap up the outline and write something, anything starting June 1st.

Things Are Moving Fast Now



by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Now that I have a handle on my POV characters, things are moving far faster. In fact, the only thing slowing me down finishing the outline and writing is the massive amount of research I realize I have to do. I have to understand the characters I’ve come up with and the only way to do so is to know what they would know.

I still have a fair amount of reading to do on the abstract of character development, but simply see that as more reading.

I really understand far better the point of this story (two novels, one story). That allows both the reading and the research to flow far, far faster. I have an absurd amount of reading to do if I’m going to develop characters that don’t embarrass me what how flimsy they are.

One thing I have to do is beef up my Hero. Right now, he’s simply an exaggerated — and far more stable — version of myself in Seoul about 12 years ago. But for him to be, well, the Hero, he has to be someone you can root for. He has to be active, not just a womanizing drunk who gets away with shit because of how colorful he is.

But I’m really pleased.

I’m reading as much as I can, as fast as I can. I hope to start writing again no later than June 1st. I am very unhappy with how long it’s going to take me — even under the most ideal of circumstances — to start speccing the story out to agents.

But I’m all in. My entire creative life is devoted to this novel. Every day my understanding of the story I want to tell grows stronger.

At the very least, I won’t embarrass myself.

I Have To Prepare Myself For Someone Stealing A March On Me Creatively



by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I don’t know how it’s going to happen, but I get the feeling someone is thinking about writing something — probably a screenplay — inspired by the novel I’ve been working on for about 18 months now.

I can either give up or work harder and faster.

I’m going to work harder and faster.

There’s little more I can do. I guess, should the worst happen, I can console myself by saying at least I understand how to tell a story better. The reason why it’s taken me so long to get to this point is the story I’ve come up with is a lot of plot and I should have been thinking about character.

The story is convoluted and complicated and it’s taken me this long to figure out how to tell it is a simple way. I love this story and its characters. Even if I wake up tomorrow and a movie is being produced that is essentially my novel, at least I’ll be better off as a storyteller than I was when I started this process.

But that hasn’t happened….yet.

I can use this fear as a reason to work harder and faster and see what happens.

Now What



by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Well, if nothing else, I’ve got my motivation to hurry up with the novel I’m developing. The novel deals with some “big ideas” that are quite provocative in the context of the rise of fascism in America.

I have a massive amount of reading to do, however, if I want to make my characters believable. Every time America lurches forward on its now irrefutable path towards an autocratic “managed democracy,” feel added instinctive to work harder and faster on this novel.

The only problem is it is something of an epic undertaking given the significant learning curve I’ve had to deal with as well as how I’m doing all of this in a vacuum. (For the most part.)

Anyway, this dark foreboding I feel about our nation’s future is exactly the feeling I need to make this political thriller as dark as it needs to be. I had worried that my natural fun disposition would make it difficult to find the darkness necessary to write a proper thriller.

Well, that’s not going to be a problem anymore.

On The Matter Of Word Count


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I am well aware that the “sweetspot” for a published novel is about 80,000-100,000 words. But it’s not impossible for a novel to be published that is longer. In fact, the novel I’m using as my textbook, “The Girl Who Played With Fire” is in the 165,000 – 185,000 range.

That’s my vision.

I’m going to write a first draft that aims to be around 165,000 words and go from there. If beta readers think its too long, then I’ll do something about that. Or if an agent / editor tells me the only way it will get published is to cut its size, then I will.

Or, if all else fails, I’ll simply self-publish and be able to feel content that I did, in fact, write a novel after everyone told me I sucked and why am I even thinking about writing anything at all. (Fuck those people, by the way.)

One thing that is really beginning to hit home is how brutal the publishing business is in real terms. Nobody owes you nothing, as they say. But I really, really believe in the importance of my novel’s vision as-is. I believe the that I can pull off a novel that is such a fast read that you don’t even notice how long it is.

I’d rather fail in a rather spectacular fashion than limit myself and not even give myself the opportunity to excel.

V-Log: Idle Rambling About The #Novel I’m Developing

Some thoughts.

Of Trying To Make My Heroine More ‘Accessible’



by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

While I love Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy, there are a few weaknesses with it that eat away at me. One is while Lisbeth Salander is iconic, there are a few problems with her that are off-putting. One is she’s supposed to be some sort of dark superhacker with Asperger’s who is not very easy to get along with.

We fall in love with her in large part because of graphic, horrific scene that I hate. But it is so bad that you keep worrying about her fate as the books progress.

All of this has led me to want to create a heroine who is far, far more accessable. My heroine, like Lisbeth Salander, has a fucked up personal history, but she is, natively, essentially a manic pixie dreamgirl. But for events beyond her control, she would be more Natalie Portman’s character in “Garden State” than Lisbeth Salander. My inspiration for this is how you sometimes hear about a woman who went to law school specifically to free her brother from jail. I always wondered, “Now what? She got her brother free, but she’s still a lawyer.”

Anyway, now that I’m learning about character that concept is, at least, within my reach now. In the past, it was something of a daydream. I’m feeling pretty pumped that maybe I might actually pull this off. But I still have a huge amount of reading to do, a huge amount of work to do.

It will be interesting to see what this story finally looks like. But I have a feeling once I nail down character, the actual writing may begin to go far, far faster than it has to date.

Learning About Character Development In Fiction Is Changing My Life



by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The only reason why I’m obsessing about developing the characters in my novel so late in the game is I finally know what the story is about. As such, I now realize I have a strong plot and a strong canon, but when it comes to my characters I pretty much have empty vessels that walk around the other two without any motivation.

I am hoping to change that by cramming as much as I can about how to build not just characters, but people. I want my characters to be “real” in the minds of my audience. And the more I look into how to do that, the more I realize that’s a pretty road ahead. But it does help a lot that I’m drawing upon the resource of people I knew in Seoul 12 years ago. They were a pretty kooky lot — as was I — and so now I have to spend some time reading, reading, reading about things to flesh out these characters which to date have simply been placeholder “moods” that I used to think about the plot and canon.

Or, put another way, this is yet another re-calibration of this project. The story is going to get much, much better now. I’m giving myself some slack time to simply read as much as possible about how to build character, as well as the things these characters would be interested in, before I get back to writing.

I hope by the end of this process to have near-absolute control over my characters so they do what I need them to do in the context of my vision for the story. (Or, in this case, one story, two books.) That’s the goal, at least. I can’t keep spinning my wheels forever.

So, the next few days will be spent reading up on a lot of things I’ve thought about reading about, but have put off. No more. I’m really cramming about the interaction between plot, canon and character so I can turn around and write something good enough that people like, actually give me an opinion when they read it, instead of just silence.

I’m Kind Of Obsessed With Character Development In My Novel Right Now



by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’m doing a lot of reading about how to develop fictional characters right now. And, I say again, anyone who demanded I “just write” 18 months ago can eat shit and fuck off. I’m on the cusp of producing a story that’s really great relative to my writing ability and if I had followed that advice when people kept telling me to do that, I would have simply have embarrassed myself.

I know at least one of the people who said that simply wanted to be my Col. Tom Parker and fuck with my mind. I’m SO GLAD I have gotten rid of gaslighting people like that. Fuck those people. It’s been over a year and I’m still furious. No one tells me they “know me better than I know myself” without there being consequences.

Anyway. I’m cramming about character right now. I’m going to try to read up on the subject as much as I can. I have canon and plot, but not much character. I hope to change that very, very soon. The story on a tactical level is, at last, beginning to stabilize. It’s either stabilizing or I’m just so tired of throwing everything in the air on a regular basis that I’m finally willing to write something, anything to be able to say I’ve finished a first draft.

You can’t edit a blank page, as they say.

I think one of the reasons why I’m reading so much is it’s a measurable metric. I’m actually moving towards my goal by reading as much as possible, as quickly as possible.