Tag: The Girl Who Played With Fire

Things Are Getting Really Good With The Novel’s Development


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’m finally just about where I want to be with the novel. At least on a developmental basis. The first act is pretty stable at this point, as is the third act. It’s the second act that I still have some blank spaces left in the outline. But in the next day or so, I hope to rework it to such an extent that I can fill those blanks and start writing with gusto again.

I finally feel like I have laid out the proper structure for the novel. One of the crucial things I had to do was stop following the structure of Stieg Larsson’s The Girl Who Played With Fire so closely. My story just doesn’t fit its structure. As such, when I finally figured out the story I wanted to tell and how I wanted to tell it, the novel is it’s own thing now, not just overwrought fan fiction.

Once I sort the second act out, things should move a lot faster when it comes to the actual writing. I have a lot of reading to do, still, to flesh out some of the characterizations. I keep punting on reading because I’m nervous I’m going to read something that makes me throw everything out again. I’ve done that so many times — and so often felt like I was spinning my wheels — that it’s very frustrating.

And, yet, the only way to give life to my characters is to do a lot of reading. I hope to at least try to get back into the habit of reading a lot again in the near future. It’s just so difficult to do when my entire life has become consumed with developing and writing this novel.

But, in general, the structure of this novel is really, really strong. My goal is to write a first draft that’s so stable that when I write the second draft all I’ll have to do is just rewrite everything, I won’t really have to mess with the actual structure of the story. You’re supposed to give yourself a month between the first and second drafts and I think I’ll spend that month working on the second book in this two book story.

I wish I could follow in Stieg Larsson’s footsteps (minus the dying of a heart attack, of course) and finish three novels, but that’s just not how it worked out. I have a prequal (or two) already mapped out in my mind, but those would only be written if I manage to sell these two books and they’re popular enough that people want to know what happened before the events they depict.

I keep looking at the outline, even with all the gaps and am quite pleased. It’s taken me about three years to get this point, but I finally see land just over the horizon. I really hope to get to writing again soon.

The Influence Of Stieg Larsson On My Novel


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

If you were to have asked me a decade ago what novel I saw myself writing, I would have said some sort of scifi novel. But here I am, working on a thriller in the style of Stieg Larsson’s The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. I, of course, am actually using his The Girl Who Played With Fire as my “textbook.”

The only reason why this happened is I love The Girl Who Played With Fire so much that I can read it over and over and over and over and over and over and not get bored. The ironic thing is I haven’t even read it all the way through that much. I just read the first 50-100 pages a lot as part of my “study.” Larsson, in some ways, was far more ambitious in his structure than I am.

My novel is going to be a lot more straightforward in its structure. I just don’t know squat about police procedurals and was never that good a journalist, either. So I just have to try to fake it. This is going to be a far more journalistic oriented novel than The Girl Who Played With Fire.

Anyway, I keep being paranoid that the Larsson estate is looking at this blog in alarm for this or that reason. If you are — cool it guys, you have nothing to worry about. While my heroine is meant to be an American Lisbeth Salander, that’s where the similarities stop. I will, however, give myself credit – I’ve come up with a pretty good heroine, if I do say so myself.

I’m sure something will happen to make my dreams of writing a break out thriller moot, but I’m digging the endorphin rush of allowing myself to be delusional for an extended amount of time.

#Writing A #Novel Is Hard Work


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Things are really beginning to stabilize with the rebooted novel. But at the same time, it’s beginning to sink in the amount of hard work I’m going to have to put into it. I’m really looking very closely at how Stieg Larsson did The Girl Who Played With Fire. And, yet, at the same time, my story and his story share only a genre. Otherwise, the intention of the two novels could not be more different.

I just don’t get how he got away with so much exposition and backstory upfront. I don’t have that luxury. I can’t really follow his work too close to the specifics of scenes structure and so forth because I need to get to the point a lot quicker than he did in that novel. And my novel is a first novel in a potential series, while The Girl Who Played With Fire is the second.

But I definitely with this rebooted version of my novel understand that if you have a big universe like I do, that you don’t just throw it at the audience in one big shot. You have to methodically begin to roll out your universe in a way that keeps them reading.

As I keep saying, I have no idea what I’m doing, so in my insecurity I’m using The Girl Who Played With Fire as my “textbook.” I hope things will go a lot faster with writing from now on. But I have to be dogged in my drive to finish this work up as quickly as possible.

My lingering fear is the result of the upcoming election — whatever it may be — will cause the conceit of the novel to seem quaint. But you can’t edit a blank page, as they say.

The Big Reboot


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Well, I’m moving forward with taking the novel to the next level. It’s just a matter of doing a lot of hard work really quick. I also realized I need to study Stieg Larsson’s “The Girl Who Played With Fire” more, too. He really deals with the mechanics of structure that I can use to figure a lot of things out.

But I have a short amount of time. I can’t keep rewriting this thing forever. I need to move forward faster. So, it’s time to buckle down and start working. I still want to have something, anything, done by no later than Thanksgiving. I’d prefer it be Election Day, but that just doesn’t seem to be possible right now.

I really need to do something like go to NYC to clear my mind. I hope to do that this weekend. Maybe. It might be a bridge too far, but we’ll see. But I have a lot of great ideas as to how to make the first act far, far better.

A Struggle With POV #AmWriting & Trying To Use The Snow Man by Jo Nesbø As An Additional Textbook



by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I read in one of my many books that you’re only supposed to have six POV characters in a pop novel. Using The Girl Who Played With Fire as my textbook suggests this is not always the case.

So, I’m going to break the rule.

Stieg Larsson must have closer to 10 POVs in that novel and it’s quite readable. In fact, I think of it is a textbook example of how to write a great pop novel. Hence my use of it as, well, my textbook. But I must admit that I’m going to study The Snow Man by Jo Nesbø as well because I need to go outside my comfort one. I need to study someone else’s work, too.

Anyway, the main reason why I’m breaking the POV rule is my female romantic lead. I really want to show my hero from her POV for the purposes of character and relationship building. It is interesting how different the novel is in the abstract of development and the concrete of actually writing it. I definitely understand why they tell you not to show your first draft to anyone. I’m writing some pretty shitty copy right now, but it’s definitely helping to figure out what works and what doesn’t work.

I’m in a unique situation when it comes to how much time I have to develop and write this novel. I’m not taking it for granted. I’m trying to get a finished first draft done as quickly as possible, it’s just a huge amount of work and, as such, it slows things down.

The Dream Of Being Joshua To Stieg Larsson’s Moses

Shelton Bumgarner

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

I am fully prepared to die of consumption — or a Stieg Larsson-style heart attack — just as the novel I’m developing is sold — if it ever is. But there’s a little part of me that thinks maybe I’ll at least get to be Tom Clancy in the end. He was a bit older when he sold his first novel and lived long enough to enjoy some of the success generated by it. But it’s Larsson to whom I feel a real kindship on a number of different levels and maybe, just maybe, I’ll get to live the dream he was never able to.

I have been developing this concept for about a year now and it’s time to put up or shut up. So, I’m giving myself until Jan. 1st, 2020. I have to accept that whatever I draft I finish by my deadline of about April 2020 is NOT going to be a second draft. It’s a first draft and, as such, something I can’t really share with a lot of people.

The major problem I’ve faced for a year is I came up with the plot really fast and was so ill prepared to give it the structure necessary to support. I spent a year pretty much just running in place as I came across existential problem after existential problem. If I had a wife or a girlfriend — or, hell, just a friend — they would have either told me the whole thing was way beyond my ambition or would have at least been my “reader” to speed up the process. But as it was, I had no one to tell me “no.” I dove full steam ahead into a project that I simply was not prepared to complete with the skillset that I had at the time.

Now, a year later, I finally understand some pretty basic elements of the story. That it’s taken so long to get to this point is really, really embarrassing. Now, at least, if I do manage to finish this novel, I’m not going to embarrass myself. The only difference between this novel and Gone Girl, or maybe Sharp Objects, to be more realistic, is my native writing ability. And Gillian Flynn’s background is such that Verified Liberals on Twitter instantly give her a lot more credit than they ever will me, the middle aged white man hayseed rube crackpot failure dreamer loser in the rural part of a purple flyover state.

Anyway, I can only hold this particular pity party for so long. If nothing else, relative my native writing ability this specific debut novel might be seen as my Reservoir Dogs-Sharp Objects to my second novel’s Pulp Fiction-Gone Girl. Or, maybe, just maybe, it’ll enjoy the I’ll get to enjoy its success. Maybe I’ll, for once, get to enter the promise land of commercial and artistic success, a place that not even Larsson lived to see.

V-Log: I’m Obsessing Over ‘The Girl Who Played With Fire’ While #Writing My #Scifi #Novel

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

This one is pretty good.