Things are going so well with the first act of the third draft of my first novel that I’m seriously thinking about developing the three scifi novels I have rolling around in my mind.
I just need to stretch my legs creatively. I need to have the option of thinking about something other than this same novel. The goal is that the overall product will be better for all the things I’m working on.
I find myself thinking about querying and reading books to “comp” my book to. At the moment, all I have is pretty much just Stieg Larsson books, the originals of which are about 20 years old now.
But I think once January 1st rolls around that I’m going to get a lot of work done. Watch me say that then something happen to slow me down significantly. I’m kind of falling apart physically and I’m a little worried that Something Bad will happen big enough to force me to either pause writing or change the context a great deal.
As I’ve written before, Hollywood actresses have a…unique…psychology. And that psychology tends to get more unique the older they get because they often times become producers. That’s why someone like Jennifer Lawrence is cool with getting paid $20 million for a mid-tier vehicle where she apparently has a fight in the ocean totally buff naked.
And don’t get me started in how puzzling it is to me that there was this huge scramble to play the Hollywood movie version of Lisbeth Salander. I love the character, too, but, yikes, why put yourself through the horrific things that poor woman had to go through and have it on screen!
Sorry you had that done to you, Lisbeth.
Very curious.
With that in mind, it definitely seems as though if I win the creative lottery and my novel becomes successful enough that Hollywood will want to adapt it…that a lot of actresses will be interested in playing one of the numerous female characters I’ve come up with.
The novel isn’t nearly as dark as The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. But there are some…edgy elements to it that I think Hollywood actresses might really like. But, really, what do I know.
I’m just drunk nobody in the middle of nowhere with a dream.
The original script for The Blues Brothers was over 300 pages long. While I don’t quite have the problem that Dan Akroyd had with that project when it comes to length, I definitely have a problem.
In number of scenes, at least, the first act of this novel is going to equal the entire second act. This is bad structure. And, yet, I think what I’m going to do is just finish an “alpha” release of the third draft then take stock of things. I will have two options depending on how things work out.
If the novel is no more, than, say, 140,000 words, then I will just say damn the torpedoes’ full speed ahead and try to pitch what I have. If the final alpha release is closer to 160,000 words, I’m going to think seriously about splitting it in two and connect the two novels through a cliffhanger.
No matter what, I think I need to YET AGAIN try to begin work on a backup project — probably a scifi novel. I have a really good scifi take on pandemic fiction that I think I could probably knock out pretty quick because I have so much more experience about how to write a novel after years of struggle.
But I am really pleased with how this third draft is sorting itself out. The big issue is there are all these elements to the novel that simply can’t be “yadda yadda yadda’d” if I want to do it properly. Now that I know how to tell a story, I realize that writing a novel — at least for me — is a lot like trying to move a huge ship one way or another.
You can’t just turn on a dime. If you think up a really cool element of the story with a secondary POV character, you have to give that element some thought or otherwise people will feel cheated.
That’s why I have a huge first act at the moment. And, yet, I try to comfort myself by realizing that the first act of The Girl Who Played With Fire is just as enormous. All this goes back to the cold, hard fact that the point of writing a novel is to equally tell a good story and finish the Goddamn thing.
So as long as I serve up a great story to readers, I doubt the average person will get too worked up that it has an enormous first act. And, remember, the issue is there are a number of known unknowns. I just know scene number, not length. And I haven’t rewritten the rest of the novel that is already written from the second draft.
So, I’m going to buckle down and finish the third draft without much regard to some pretty basic issues. Once the alpha release is done, THEN I can make an executive decision as to what to do next.
On a structural basis, my novel is a lot like Stieg Larsson’s The Girl Who Played With Fire in the sense that the Big Event doesn’t happen until the end / beginning of the first act. It took me forever to figure out the structure of that novel…until I learned it was actually the first half of a much bigger story. After that piece of information, its structure make a lot more sense.
But other than having The Big Event be the thing that pushes my heroine in the the Special World, otherwise, if I do my job right, the rest of the structure of the novel should be pretty conventional. At least, that’s my goal.
My big concern is that it takes soooo long for The Big Event to happen that people will grow board or annoyed. And, yet, there is so much drama — and sex — in the first act that I’m pretty confident that people will be so busy reading all the spicy scenes in the first act that they won’t even notice that that many thousand of words have gone by without, well, The Big Event happening.
My heroine looks, in general, like Corrie Yee in my mind as I write her.
I, in general, like what I’ve come up with. But, as I keep saying, all of this is being done in a near complete vacuum so, lulz, I have no idea what the fuck the audience will think of it — especially some of the more spicy elements. Some of what I’ve come up with is supposed to be serious, but because it’s not hateful and scary…I could see it be as rather….uhhh…comical.
But I can’t help who I am. I’m just not as dark and scary as Stieg Larsson in my writing.
I have no friends and no one likes me. As such, all I have when it comes to this novel is my gut. I just tell the story with Stieg Larsson’s The Girl With Dragon Tattoo and The Girl Who Played With Fire as a hazy, general frame of reference. I have — somehow — managed to flip the script on some of the…uhhh….darker…elements of the first novel in a way that reflects my personality.
Instead of dark and scary, I do the same thing but in a consensual way that furthers the plot. (IYKYK)
At least, that’s the general goal.
There is so much sex happening the first act that I sometimes worry that it may come across as the mystery-thriller version of Debby Does Dallas. And, yet, because all of this is happening in a vacuum….I just don’t know.
And things calm down dramatically on the sexxy time front during the rest of the novel, to the point that I kind of feel uneasy that I come out swinning hard in the first act then everything goes normal for the rest of the novel, leaving the audience a little let down.
Or not. Who knows. I really do like what I’ve managed to come up with. The story is a real page turner, even if I have no idea what the reaction of the audience will be to some of the more….controversial editorial decision on my part.
Ok. Things are rocking now with this third draft of my first novel. I’ve finally, finally, figured out some pretty basic elements of the novel that I can work with going forward. I’ve swapped a gender and changed the ethnicity of one character, but now I am closing in on the end of the first act.
The Big Event that ends the first act is growing even bigger and more dramatic by the moment. Let’s just say there my heroine has a hell of a New Year’s Eve 1994. And that’s just the event that kick starts the her push into the “special world.”
I now have THREE MEN interested in my heroine for different reasons and one of them I have to flesh out so there’s a point to him even being in the story to begin with. He serves a purpose in the first act, but I’m at a loss as to what he does for the rest of the novel.
I have a few options. One of them is he shows up every once in a while to serve a specific purpose AND his appearance in the last scene would give the story a lot of symmetry. Which allegedly, is a form of good storytelling. But the key thing is I have to keep my eye focused on what genre this novel is. If I’m not careful, this thing is going to be more just general fiction than a mystery-thriller.
It’s not my nature to go dark in my writing and I’m not really all that interested in *showing* bad things happening to my characters, so, I dunno. I guess I’m going to have to be really thoughtful in giving a lot of pagetime to the results of bad things happening.
Or something.
The general premise of the story is really, really good. I’m very pleased. But, then, of course, that could be the delusion that has been a the core of all of this talking. There have been a number of times when I’ve winced at some mistake I made because I’m doing all of this in a creative vacuum.
I continue to be concerned that just as I’m about to query this novel, there will be a perfect storm involving AI and The Fourth Turning that makes all my hard work over the last few years very, very moot. But I’m well on my way to actually writing a novel — a real novel that I can at least be content that I’ve finished.
Things are beginning to stabilize with the third draft of the novel. Though, I found myself talking about it today and I realized there was a huge plot element that I had not yet formalized and I felt rather insecure.
My heroine looks like Corrie Yee in my mind.
I *think* I have that fixed.
My fear is that the novel will be seen as a jumble of different genres to the point that it isn’t focused. And, yet, I also think my implementation of a variety of genres is interesting enough and seamless enough that there won’t be a problem with focus.
I hope.
I’ve decided to lean into a somewhat “supernatural” element to the novel that I think will make it really thought provoking. I am also flipping the script on some of the darker elements of Stieg Larsson’s stuff so while it may seem familiar to fans of his work, my specific interpretation of such behavior is totally different and not nearly as…problematic.
But the subject is so loaded that just using it as a plot point could cause some readers to either blanch or chuckle. But being a good enough writer that I can pull of such a risky move is why they pay me the big bucks, right?
I have *got* to lock down the first few scenes (or, even better yet, chapters) of this novel so I can start to progress into the second act. Things are getting much, much better and I’m just about to do just that — I am still on track to wrap up the third draft around April 1st, 2024.
But I have GOT to stop futzing with everything. It’s never going to be perfect. I have a great premise and if I won’t stop tinkering with it until it’s “perfect” the Fourth Turning could happen and I’ll be too busy dodging bullets or weaponized ICE agents to try to query the damn thing.
Not only am I falling apart, but I continue to feel like I’m spinning my wheels when it comes to the first few chapters of this novel. This is the point in the past, of course, when the whole thing would collapse and I would pretty much lurch forward in the plot so I could at least start writing with some momentum again.
My heroine looks like Corrie Yee in my mind.
But this time, I’m not doing that. I’m going to press forward. I’m pretty sure that I have figured things out with the beginning of this novel. It’s just a matter of being really, really patient and methodical.
I’ve changed so much about characters and relationship when it comes to this novel that that, unto itself, is going to slow me down. But — hopefully — not too much. I am still on track to wrap up this third draft by about April 1st. That will give me a few months so do pre-flight things before I query to agents in the fall of 2024.
I still have no idea what I’m going to “comp” my novel to. In general, the novel could be compared to Gillian Flynn’s “Sharp Objects.” And I’m sure I’m going to make many, many mistakes as part of the querying process. But that’s part of the fun of it all, the thing that gives one a sense of adventure.
Being an aspiring novelist, you are bombarded with a lot of advice, all of it being contradictory. It’s enough to make your head spin. But I’ve come up with my own, personal, set of arbitrary rules that I *try* to follow as well as possible as I write this third draft.
I believe I have a stable first chapter. I believe I’m well on my way to having a stable second chapter. The big issue will be how quickly — or slowly — it takes me to get past just the first few chapters into the core of the first act and then into the second act.
I can’t keep writing and re-writing this portion of the novel forever.
I think it’s possible that the first two chapters of the third draft of my novel are now stable. I *hope* that this will mean that things will go much, much faster. But one problem I’ve discovered is even though the first two chapters are strong, all the changes I’ve made in those first two chapters are kind of forcing my hand.
In my mind, my heroine looks like Corrie Yee.
I’m going to have to rework huge parts of the rest of the novel to accommodate these improvements. And I had no idea that thinking up a new, better beginning for the novel would require so much work.
But, here I am, months after I hope to start to rewrite the novel in earnest, still somewhat spinning my wheels in the very beginning of the novel. I’ve also added about 30,000 new words to the novel — at least. The hope is, of course, that all these new, spicy scenes I’m working into the plot will turn this novel into a real page turner.
That’s the hope, at least. I know I’ve stumbled upon a really cool story. The question now is, of course, is my writing ability up to the task? And that doesn’t even begin to address my lingering fears about the rise of AI and the so-called “Fourth Turning” happening at some point in late 2024, early 2025.
But, at this point, I just want to finish the third draft sooner rather than later. I’m still shooting for April, 2024. That’s my goal. I just don’t want this to slip any further. I do not want it to be April 2025, I want April 2024.
That will give me time to pivot to the pre-flight work necessary to query in the fall of 2024, just as all hell may be about to break out.
My heroine, in my mind, looks a lot like Corrie Yee. There are a lot — A LOT — of lingering known unknowns when it comes to the third draft of my novel. But I’m still pretty confident that I should be able to write much, much faster now. I know the general relationships of the characters and so now I have to root around in the specifics as I move forward through the story to write a solid alpha release of the third draft.
I hope to do that by around April 1st. But it’s going to be a real struggle. Sometimes, I feel like my life is falling apart and everything will be thrown up in the air at any moment in a way or ways that I just can’t predict.
I wish some of these people who read this blog on occasion from unexpected, exotic locales had some connection to the Hollywood industrial complex and would be interested in getting the novel published. It’s shaping up to be really good. With my luck, of course, they’ll just steal the idea and I’ll be forced to watch other people have some success from all my hard work.
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