After three years, and the addition of three more novels to the project, I’ve finally finished a fleshed out outline that totals 54 pages. Next, I am going to give myself a day or so breather to think, read and prepare.
Once that’s over, then I’m going to start “just writing.”
I’m hoping things will go so fast that I’ll be ready to plunge into the second book in the series pretty quick. That’s the point of all of this preperation — when I’m “just writing” things go a lot faster because I know exactly what’s going to happen with the story.
So, I’m hoping that I can write the four novels, then rewrite them , have beta readers then re-write them AGAIN a lot sooner than you might think. I have a milestone birthday coming up at an alarming rate and I want to finish this series by around that point. That gives me maybe 18 months.
But this milestone really gives me a sense of accomplishment. I can already tell, however, that I’m probably going to feel compelled to rewrite some of the outline just because now that I understand the entire story in my head, something have to change to give it some cohesion.
I’m going to try not to do too much of that, however. I don’t want to find a new way to spin my wheels. I’m going to start writing again pretty soon, no matter what.
I’m just about to wrap up a fleshed out outline for the first draft of the first novel in this thriller series I’m working on. A lot and I mean A LOT could still go wrong, but at least I have some sense of the story I’m trying to tell.
I’m in the third act of the outline and I need to distract myself for a little while to figure out how I get from point A to point B in the plot in as creative and interesting a way as possible.
One thing I like about the way I’m doing all of this is I’ve drained the process of any uncertainty or giddy excitement. This is no longer about “Wow, I’m writing a novel!” It’s now about being as serious and clear minded as possible about the process and figuring out how to tell the best story possible. It reminds me of how I felt when I was at the height of DJing in Seoul — when I cued up a song, it was just sound, not music. It was a means to an end — getting people dancing — not music that was meant to entertain me.
The long term dream.
I’m trying to follow the general guidelines of Save The Cat Writes A Novel, but I’m not sure that it’s guide for a third act jibes perfectly with the nature of my novel. But, we’ll see.
I’ve come up with such a massive universe and a macro plot that spans four novels and over two decades of time that I’m feeling pretty good. A lot depends now on my actual writing ability. I don’t want to be a good writer, I want to be a popular writer.
I want to tell a great tale that keeps people turning pages for the duration of four novel-length stories. When I started this process, I had no idea it was going to take so long. But, at last, I may be about to actually start writing a my first novel in a way that I will actually write its first draft pretty quick, all things considered.
Once I finish the fleshed out outline, I’m hoping the actual writing won’t take so long. It’s just been serious pain the butt to get to this point.
The original reason why I started working on a novel of any sort was my pure, white hot rage against the Trump Administration. I had no idea what I was doing, but I had a lot of energy and decided to work on a scifi novel that would talk about the major themes of the era.
It soon became clear that my ambitions were simply too huge and I would never have the resources to finish what I had come up with. Flash forward three years and I’m in a very different situation. While I’ve again come up with a massive creative project, this time I’ve got a handle on what it all means. And, much to my own shock, it’s not a massive sci-fi series that I’m working on, but rather a thriller series.
The fictional baby in question as a fictional adult.
This happened in large part because there was always one book that I was able to read over and over again and that was Stieg Larsson’s The Girl Who Played With Fire. At first, the book I was writing was very much Stieg Larsson fanfiction.
And the, gradually, everything changed. The story was fused with an array of other themes, ideas, inspirations and it was not fanfiction, but it’s own unique story. What was one book was split into two with a cliff hanger connecting the two books.
Then the one thing I totally never expected to happen, happened: Trump was not able to steal the 2020 election.
That’s when I did an assessment of where I was and realized that with Trump out of office, I needed to do something radical. So, looking around, I realized there was a obvious fix — go backwards and time and develop two novels from the massive backstory that I had come up with for the two novels I was working on.
At first, I thought this was going to be a breeze. I had two solid plots in my mind and things were going really fast. Then, however, it soon enough became clear that I have a huge ego and am very demanding of myself. This is when I saw Mare of Easttown and was both shocked and inspired by what I saw. It was so good, that I realized I needed to up my game.
Mare of Easttown
And, so, here were are.
This first book now is being written with my impression of Mare of Easttown in the forefront of my mind. So, this first book is very different than one might think from someone who has studied one of Stieg Larsson’s books and used it as something of an informal novel writing text book.
But I’m feeling pretty good. I have shifted the focus of the novel from the abstract of owning a newspaper to the very concrete crisis of possession of a baby. The issue is I have a lot of thinking to do. I have to flesh out an element of this story that I didn’t even realize needed to understood better.
Yet, thankfully, at least I know which direction to go at last.
This first book in the series I’m writing is definitely finally come into its own. I’ve fleshed out the first half of the outline to my satisfaction. But now that I’m in the second half I’ve smashed into an existential problem that I’ve only begun to fix.
That existential question was: why?
The baby in question grows up to look something like this later in the series.
Now that I know that “why’ is the central issue of the story, I can do a significant creative reset. Another thing I’ve decided to do is make the central issue of the entire story not the abstract of a newspaper, but the very concrete problem of possession of a baby.
All of these changes hinge on something I didn’t even realize was a problem — the current piss-poor development of a very crucial character in the story. But all of these problems are beginning to fix themselves now that I realize that was what was causing problems to begin with.
The story, overall, is getting much better. It’s just going to take some time to flesh out these elements of the story that I just hadn’t even thought about before.
Now that I understand what the problems to fix are, things should move a lot faster. I no longer have unknown abstract problems to work with, but very concrete issues that can be fixed by simply doing a lot of thinking and daydreaming.
I’m being extremely delusional still when it comes to this thriller series I’m working on. But at the moment absolutely no one cares if I drop off the face of the earth, so I don’t think you’ll be grudge me a little daydreaming. Though, this being the Internet, maybe you will.
Jessica Chastain / Image: Internet
But there’s one specific character in this thriller series I’m working on that I’ve imagined looking and acting like Jessica Chastain. And now that I’ve decided to write two exogenesis novels as well, there’s another red head I imagine playing this character in my head, IT’s Sophia Lillis.
Sophia Lillis / Image: Internet
She’s a little young at the moment to play the character in the first book movie adaptation of any sort of I-win-the-lottery situation where there are movie adaptations of these four novels. But by the time things came to that point, she probably would be about the right age to play the early-20s stage of the character I think Chastain could play in later books.
Yet, again, this is all extremely delusional. I just need hope at the moment and, also, I need someone to model the character after in my mind. I like Chastain’s vibe. And I like the idea that we would kind of see her character — and all the other characters change over the course of a generation.
That’s one of the things I did not expect when I started this process about three years ago — how enormous it would become. I’m really digging deep into every aspect of my personal life — and the lives of a few other people — to flesh out this universe I’ve come up with and populate it with not just characters, but people.
I’ve wasted an embarrassing amount of paper and ink spinning my wheels on this huge creative project I’m working on. But I think, maybe, it’s possible that now that I have a better handle on the characters in this series that I may be able to sprint forward.
But I’m still very much deep in the delusional phase of all of this. Because I’m both very delusional about what’s going on and I have a huge ego, I find myself thinking about who might play different characters in these various novels. The whole four novel series hinges on the extremely poor life choices of a young woman in the first novel .
Anyway, I’m basing this tragic young woman on the late, great Annie Shapiro. It’s kind of my homage to someone who really changed my life, to essentially try to tell her story in a garbled, muddled, extremely fictionalized fashion.
It occured to me recently that Jennifer Lawrence would be the perfect person to play this tragic young lady in any movie adaptation. I have long thought Ms. Lawrence would be great to play the late Annie Shapiro in a movie about the fucked up events surround ROKon Magazine, but these four novels draw very heavily from what happened in late 2006 – early 2007 in Seoul. I feel very sheepish saying this because I haven’t even finished the the first draft, but it’s fun to think about. The only reason why I’m even writing this is 100% extroverted and I can’t help myself.
Annie Shapiro will find life again in fiction.
It goes without saying that I really need to put up or shut up. I’ve been talking about this project for years now and still don’t have anything I can really show anyone other than one or two really strong outlines.
I hope to make a first pass at fleshing out one of those outlines — the one for the first novel — in the next few days. This is a huge, huge creative project, but I love to challenge myself with such things. But I really do need to shut the fuck up and write.
Something about the strong character development of Mare of Easttown lingers in my mind as I work on this first novel in the series I’m developing and writing. I have a hunch why — it’s a story about family in a small, tightknit community.
Given that this first novel is more about character than some sort of fast paced thriller, I find myself dwelling upon what made Mare of Easttown so compelling. If I can just crack the nut of creating, not just characters but people, then I will at least not embarrass myself.
Anyway. At this point, it’s all about focus. No one believes in me, but me. I don’t have anyone to tell me “no,” so I can do whatever the fuck I want. I can’t even get relatives to help me out with this project. They give me lip service support, but sometimes, I wonder if they even believe me when I say I’m hard at work on this.
If I had someone, anyone, in my life who cared about me, I might not have even started this thing because they would have told me to “just write a short story” and I would have gotten mad.
I am beginning to believe on a tentative basis that I may have figured out something crucial about the plot of this first novel in the four novel series I’m working on.
I think I know what this story is about.
I had two choices and I decided to go with more emotional, more visceral option. The one with heart that would probably appeal to women readers more. There’s still the other stuff that I’ve wanted with this story as well, but the primary focus is something so basic to the human condition that I think people — especially women — are really going to like it.
But I’m still just on the first draft, but knowing what the novel’s point is, it’s goal, helps a lot with how I lay out characters and their motivations. I must note that I say shit like this all the time then everything falls apart and six months later I say something similar, thinking this time the decision will stick.
I’ve decided to re-read a few books that I read some time ago. Two of these books are about how to understand and develop your characters better. Given the nature of this first novel, I feel I need to bone up again on character. I need to understand how to make these characters not just characters but actual people you believe in, and as necessary, root for.
I still have a few days to do this shit ton of reading.
I’ve also begun to do something akin — again — to character studies so I understand who I’m writing. I’ve done this before repeatedly in the past when working on this project, only to totally ignore everything I’d written. But this time, hopefully, will be different.
I really want to have a handle on these characters when I finally sit down AGAIN to write the first draft. And that’s just the first novel! But I love, love being creatively overwhelmed. That’s my jam. I love having way too much on my plate as opposed to not enough so I start to feel bad about my life.
The strong character development of “Mare of Easttown” is what I’m striving for. I really loved how well thought out and developed the characters in that show were. So, I’m going to do some intense writing and reading before I finally try to write this first draft again.
But I’m really pleased with how things are going, over all. I like how if I grow tired of banging my head against one book, I can simply move to another one and tinker on it’s plot and characters. I get to stay in-universe while I do all that work, too.
Though, I will admit that every once in a while I get frustrated enough to at least entertain the idea of writing a short story. But, I dunno. I would still like to fail in a massive, catastrophic way by writing four novels that no one wants to read than write a little short story and get shot down by some MFA intern at The New Yorker.
So. I’m reading and re-reading a number of books so when I throw myself back into actually “just writing” the first book in the four book series I’m working on, I won’t feel like I’m spinning my wheels.
More heroine for this first book looks like this:
Mixed with this:
Things, in some ways, are going so well that there’s a huge amount of momentum for me to just “keep writing.” The only thing I’m worried about at this point is in my quest to write a first draft I can believe in, I’ll continue to have the whole thing collapse on a regular basis and four years from now I’ll be in exactly the same place I am now.
Which would suck.
And, as such, here I am reading as much as I can before I start writing again. One thing I’m really focusing on is character development. I say that because the first book in the series is a lot more like Mare of Easttown, in its own way, than, say, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. But one has to note how, well, boring that book is for the first 135 odd pages. It’s just dull as dirt. I’ve often speculated it’s so bad because that’s the part of the novel that Stieg Larsson wrote and rewrote and then something happened and he realized how to fish the rest of the series.
At least, that’s what makes me feel better to believe.
I just refuse to keep spinning my wheels because I started writing again and I wasn’t prepared. I want to know exactly who my characters are, what they believe and, most importantly, what their motivations are. Given that I’m just writing the first drafts of these novels and that sounds rather dumb.
But, as I said, it’s very difficult for me to “just write” crap because for me to write something, anything of fiction, I have to believe in it. The upside o fall of this is my storytelling ability has improved significantly since I started this breached birth creative project.
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