Some thoughts.
My Novel’s Structure Is Growing More Mature
Tag: novel
V-Log: ‘A Milestone, Of Sorts’
Some thoughts.
V-Log — Developing & #Writing An ‘Apocalypse Now’ For The Trump Era
by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
In these two rambling videos, I talk about both the novel I’m writing and how fucked we are when it comes to Trumplandia. May God have mercy on our collective souls.
‘The Name Game’
by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
Mama always told me I was different. As such, when I think up character names, I struggle, really really struggle to come up with names I feel evoke the emotion I want people to feel when they see their name on the page. I have a lot of very arbitrary rules on the matter and as such for the last year names for the characters in the novel I’m attempting to develop have been one of the most difficult things to figure out.
But today, I may have figured out the name of my heroine. Maybe. I like my current given name for her because it’s unique and yet feels familiar. The instant you read her name, you feel like you know her, like you’ve at least encountered someone like her at some point in your life. And, in a sense, her name is a tip off to her native personality — she’s a manic pixie dream girl at heart. But something happened that simply made that lifestyle impossible for her as the story opens.
And, really, that’s a key difference between my heroine and, say, the gold standard for these types of novels — Lisbeth Salander. Salander is just not a very likable person. Men love her because she’s a bad ass, but they probably wouldn’t want to, like, date her. Women like her because she’s strong, complex and dark, but they, too, probably wouldn’t want to be her friend — even if she was interested in such a friendly relationship.
But my Heroine is far different. She’s constructed such that she’s actually rather affable. She’s very focused, yes, and she can easily kick any man’s ass, but she doesn’t have Asperger’s. She’s just a normal young woman who’s had something very surreal happen to her and the story opens with us seeing how that’s warped an otherwise pleasant personality into something much darker and menacing.
I would like to stress, however, that this is all conceit. My writing generally is looked down upon and many people to date have thought it sucked so bad that I shouldn’t even do it to begin with. That’s why development has been so difficult and yet so important. Add to this situation that it’s happening completely in a vacuum and, well, you can begin to understand why it’s taken a year to get to even this point.
Shrug. Rock on.
Radiohead & The Difficulty Of Conveying Music In A Novel
by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
The reason why Radiohead is so important in my development of this novel is how difficult it is to convey music in a novel. Outside of, say, The Beatles, there really aren’t a lot of pop-rock songs that are so widely known that a lot of readers wouldn’t have to stop and actually listen to the song’s referenced.
This is a problem for me given how at its heart, this novel is about music and its importance in the lives of the characters. I have a workaround of sorts — Radiohead. Radiohead both has the type of songs I need to set mood AND has a discovery that’s wide and deep enough that I have a decent chance of referencing a song that enough people know that they WON’T have to actually listen to it.
But one thing I can’t stress enough is how important music is to this novel’s universe. It’s its soul. Its heart. The thing that binds everything together. That I’ve actually managed to pull this off (at least in my own mind) is quite an accomplishment. Or, put another way — this should be a screenplay. But I like the idea I not only have absolute creative control, but I also can give you insight into a character’s internal thoughts in a way that is difficult to do in cinema.
Another thing I struggle with is setting tone. Radiohead forces me to stay focused. People want a dark, exciting thriller not just a fast-paced version of The World According To Garp. But I simply don’t take myself very seriously and so that’s bound to pop out in the novel every once in a while. I simply don’t have THAT much self-control.
We’ll see, I guess. The last time my entire life was wrapped around something of such significance was ROKon Magazine. But that was a pretty brutal creative experience that destroyed me. Hopefully this particular hat trick won’t be as emotionally painful.
My Heroine Doesn’t Fit The Media Narrative For A Latina
by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
Let me say for the record that I have no idea what I’m doing and I have no idea how long it’s going to take me to finish development of this novel, much less an actual first draft. But tonight I had a serious breakthrough on a canonical level which gives me added momentum going forward.
From the very beginning, I’ve wanted my heroine to be ethnically Latina. But as I’ve come to understand who the character is, I realize that she simply doesn’t fit the current media narrative about the Latinx community as advocated by Twitter Liberals. She’s her own person. She’s gorgeous and she can kick your ass. If you think that makes her just another “sexy slutty assassin” then fuck you. I only say that because I’ve spent much of my time the last year working to think up every possible way to flip the script on that particular trope while also giving the Latinx community a folk heroine to root for.
I want my heroine to be something that Lisbeth Salander isn’t — likable. As I’ve said from the beginning of this to-date year-long process, I want my heroine to naively be a “manic pixie dream girl,” but one that was shoved into a vat of Lisbeth Salander. Her personality has been warped because of events out of her control. She doesn’t have Asperger’s and you could actually see yourself hanging out with her but for a pretty big event in her past that totally changed who she is. I am well aware that I risk writing a younger, better looking female version of myself as my heroine. But I’m so super self-conscious about that possibility that hopefully that won’t happen.
Now, why I, a middle aged hayseed rube white guy living in a backwater portion of a purple flyover state, would do such a thing probably seems rather surreal to the average Twitter Liberal. I can’t help who I am. I can be empathetic, however. I have very strong opinions and sometimes I say things that could be perceived as offensive on any number of different levels. But I’m not racist,or a misogynist, or an incel or a bigot. I fucking hate MAGA with a white hot creative rage.
I guess some of it comes from who’s the one type of person MAGA hates the most? A Hispanic. So, if I’m going rant at the top of my lungs (using subtext) as to how much I fucking hate MAGA, the only way to do it properly is to have a Latina heroine. Throw in how much I love The Girl Who Played With Fire as a novel and, well, the rest takes care of itself. The ONLY reason why this novel is a thriller is I have to have an excuse to run around my Trump Era allegory in a way that keeps you turning pages.
I really, really want this novel to be as accessible as possible. I want everyone to have a good time — even MAGA fucktards who may be hate-reading it because Don Jr. told them it sucked. (That I even sell the damn thing is just a dream at this point. I full expect that I will have to self-publish and the best I will be able to do is get a profile in the local weekly.)
Anyway, just like you can’t hold a pregnant woman’s baby until it’s actually born, you’re going to just have to wait while I bounce between thinking, development, writing and talking a lot about what is, in real terms, still a moving object. I have a whole lot of work ahead of me still. AND my writing probably isn’t nearly as good as could be.
But I do know I’m not going embarrass myself. This could be my Sharp Object and my next novel will be my Gone Girl. Who knows.
‘All The Time In The World’
by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
Tonight is something of both a test and a milestone. It’s a test because other than one pretty big issue, I’m like Burgess Meredith at the end of his most famous Twilight Zone episode: I have all the time in the world. The question is, will I figuratively break my glasses or not? If I don’t hit the ground running pretty soon, then, well, I guess we know our answer.
But I don’t think that will happen. So tonight is a milestone. I plan on being a lot more serious with development starting tonight. I may play a little bit by writing on this blog, but I hope to throw myself into development tonight. I have a few concerns — I may have a cavity I have to deal with in the near term — but I hope I can at least wrap up development of the first act this weekend to such an extent that I can start to do a lot more practical research starting now.
I am using Audible to force myself to at least be exposed to some of my mindshare competition — I can’t simply flip through The Girl Who Played With Fire as a textbook forever. And there continue to be some lingering existential issues with the novel that I am very well aware of. The story is great, and, yet, it’s not Network. I name names (in a way) and that is simply not done in Network and other similar political works of art.
Or, put another way, while I’m trying very, very hard to appease MAGA with this novel on an existential level, given that MAGA is a fucking cult and any criticism of Der Fuehrer can never be brooked, well, there you go. That’s probably the biggest lingering existential problem — I could probably take out the conspicuous finger pointing of our current POTUS, and, yet, it’s my abject creative rage against the Trump Administration that has given me the energy to keep going with this novel long after I might otherwise have given up. If I can find a beta reader willing to help me figure out how to lop off the most obvious political aspects of the story, I’m all ears. I want this to be as big a tentpole as possible. As it stands, I got nothing. Introducing our deranged Chauncey Gardner president as a super-massive black hole that comes near to the plot at a crucial moment raises the stakes about as high as you can get. If the stakes get any higher nuclear weapons or aliens will be involved.
So, as of right now, things are going good-to-great. A lot, A LOT, can go wrong now. But I hope all the potential disasters can simply delay, not end, my quest to write a timely political guilty pleasure techno-thriller allegory for woke Park Slope Brooklyn moms. If I manage to write an American response to The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo AND give the Latinx community a fictional folk hero AND tell MAGA to FUCK OFF, all the fucking better.
Let’s rock.
Development In A Vacuum
by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
Today is crucial because, in a sense, it’s a new era in the novel’s development. I’m going to try to wrap up the scene summary on a scene-level ASAP. No later than my birthday in late February. But this could be a pretty rocky point in the year for me for a number of reasons and everything could be thrown out of whack in an rather dramatic and unexpected manner.
Or not.
One thing I’ve noticed about Stieg Larsson’s first book, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is that the first 132 pages or so are dead boring. Once you get past that point, however, the rest of the series is a lot of fun and zooms past at lightening speed, much to the detriment of your sleep schedule. I don’t know what happened at that point in the writing of that first novel, but something changed. My guess is he wrote and re-wrote those pages over the years to such an extent that it completely drained the work of any entertainment value. He came back to what he had written at some point with fresh eyes and simply used what he had when things started to work far, far better.
But that could be complete bullshit. Who knows.
That’s unlikely to happen to me because I’m doing so much development instead of “just writing” as so many people want me to do. I think if you were to study the structure of the completed novel — whenever that happens — you will definitely see how much work I put into the first act. I’ve obsessed over the first 20 scenes so much that there is an exacting sequence of events that get us to the inciting incident.
Anyway. I have no idea what I’m doing and I haven’t even really started writing seriously on the first-but-really-second draft yet. I have no idea how successful any of this is going to be because, well, I’m doing it in a complete vacuum.
Music Is The Heart Of This #Novel #AmWriting #WritingLife
by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
I have no idea what I’m doing. And, in a sense, I think what’s happening is my natural inclination to write a screenplay is pretty much completely taking over development of a novel. So, in a sense, I’m obsessing over an aspect of the novel that in real terms won’t really make much sense until it’s somehow miraculously made into a movie.
The “heart” of this novel is my extensive knowledge of pop rock music published in the last 60 odd years. Or, to put it another way, pop rock music is to me what pop culture reference are to Ernest Cline. The vision I have for this novel, however, is so different than Ready Player One that the only reason why this analogy might be made is for marketing purposes. Other than that, the two books share nothing in creative purpose.
One thing that’s really helping me ground my characters is I’m really nailing down what type of music they listen to and the exceptions. I have a lot of real-life experience in this kind of stuff and I can make some of the more unexpected situations I need to have happen believable because of that. I have to keep an eye on the plot. I can’t get too bogged down in being a pop rock show-off. But the whole structure of the novel is built from the ground up as to make music an existential feature of the story.
The surreal thing is my development is reaching Gillian Flynn levels of thinking things through, and, yet, my native writing ability simply isn’t as good as hers. The whole process is being slowed down considerably, and, yet given that I am, in fact, pushing myself to my personal creative limits the end product has to be, at least, not embarrassing? Right? Right?
But I have to stay focused on tone, theme and mood. I can’t let my natural inclination to write an updated version of The World According To Garp take over. This needs to be a dark, fast, accessible ride with the occasional moments of levity. I’m trying to force myself to study John Connolly, Gillian Flynn and a few other writers who manage to do that in a pop-art fashion.
I hope that first thing New Year’s Day, I can get back into developing the rest of the novel at the scene level. Once I wrap that up — hopefully no later than my birthday in late February, then I will plunge back into writing the first-but-really-second-draft again.
Taking The Novel To The Next Level In 2020
by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
Since I can’t do what I want to do — which is go to NYC for NYE — I splurged on Amazon. Now that I understand the characters, plot and vision of the novel, I can start to do some basic research that a lot of people would have done a lot earlier in the process. The biggest addition is to my growing pile of books is, well, how to write a police procedural.
I started this process being lazy and not wanting to go outside my comfort zone of my personal journalistic investigation knowledge. But I now realize that was dumb. I need at least a subplot where I see what the cops (or cop) are doing. Given how high the stakes are in all of this,however, I may have to talk to the FBI’s PR guy / gal. They must have someone you can talk to to simply get some sense of what they might do in to investigate a fictional crime. This is a side of the story I’m so completely clueless about that I’m going to have to be kind to myself creatively — more so than I am usually — and allow myself to make dumb mistakes without feeling existential angst.
This novel’s conceit is improving significantly. The question, of course, is will my native writing ability be up to it? I honestly can’t answer that question right now. At this point, I really just don’t want to embarrassment myself. To date, everyone — including my own brother! — is obviously barely even humoring me.
Every once in a while, I re-calibrate this novel and the last few days has been once of those times. I now realize that while the whole thing is getting much, much better, it is also going to take a lot longer that I had hoped for a number of reasons. Several issues are slowing me down. One, I have no friends and this is all happening in a vacuum. Two, the original concept was so poorly thought out that it’s taken me a year to sort things out in large part because of one.
But I definitely know the general plot of the novel. I’m giving myself no later than my birthday in late February to start actively writing again. I’m hoping that it will happen a lot soon than that.
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