Tag: The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

Day 4: Dark & Spicy

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Editor: You have to forgive me, I’m in something of a bad mood.

While I am trying to follow in pop literary footsteps of Stieg Larsson, he had a tendency to write far, far darker than I am inclined to do. And, yet, there is something to be said for being…provocative…in the name of keeping the audience interested and stimulated.

But anytime you start getting into going dark (and spicy) you bump up against the woke cancel culture mob’s rage over denying your female characters “agency.” My response to this is, ok, I get it, and yet, it’s that very lack of agency that keeps people reading because your natural inclination is when something bad happens — especially to a woman — that you feel for them and want to know what happens next.

I suppose only transgender women can write from a female point of view as a (born) male, so, lulz, just by writing ANYTHING from a female point of view as a man is enough to enraged the woke cancel culture mob. As such, I know my vision for this story and that’s what I’m going to, come what may.

I say all of this because the second chapter is going to get dark and spicy. Our heroine goes on a bender because she fears she’s failed in her objective for the first part of the story and, as such, she engages in some self-destructive behavior. She is “saved” by the male romantic lead, so, I suppose she doesn’t have “agency” and I should just give up and stare at the ceiling with the lights off until I decide to become transgender. (Wink.)

Needless to say — fuck that.

I have a really good story on my hands and to tell the story I want to tell, I’m going to have to bend the “your heroine absolutely must always have agency” law that the woke cancel culture mob seems to believe writers have to follow when they’re not plastering their works with “trigger warnings.”

Anyway, I have written the scene summaries for all of the scenes in Chapter 2 that I haven’t written out yet. So, all I have to do now is get wasted, fire up Spotify and get to writing. Writing dark spicy scenes are a real challenge for me because I hate conflict and I’m not thrilled with the idea of putting my characters through hell, but that’s what you have to do tell a great story. Put your characters up a tree then throw rocks at them.

So, that’s what I’m going to do.

I’m either going to write these dark and spicy scenes tonight or sometime early tomorrow morning. I’ve come up with a really interesting series of events that I feel will both engage readers and be provocative enough that they might actually want to finish the Goddamn novel instead of ghosting me when I give the finished second draft to them for the Beta Reader process.

The Trick Is To Keep Breathing

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’m now formally sketching out again the “bad guys closing in” portion of this latest first draft attempt. And the thing I’ve noticed is the last time I did this I crammed a lot of big events right next to each other.

Olivia Munn is what I imagine the heroine of this first novel looking like..

The thing I’ve slowly getting the hang of is how you have to let your novel’s structure breathe a little bit. You need an ebb and flow to how things roll out so you have a big event, then a few scenes that reduce tension some and then repeat.

I’m still at a loss, in some respects, as to what makes up the investigation of the murder this novel is about. Thankfully, to date I’ve just had to distract myself and I’ve figured out how to move things along. I may have a lot — maybe a huge number — of faults, but usually when I find myself in a creative corner I’m able to weasel my way out of it and think of some new direction, some new angle to take that lets me keep going pretty quickly.

Actually, imagine Olivia Munn looking a little closer to this. Similar, but not exactly.

Really, at this point, the only issue I have is how many times I’ve done this. I’ve written and rewritten this first novel a number of times. But at least each new attempt has been significantly better than the one before. The key issue now is to try to wrap things up on a second draft by spring 2023 so I can turn around and begin querying during the autumn 2023 querying season.

One thing I’m still concerned about is this novel, while interesting, doesn’t have some of the jolting events that your usual modern thriller has. It’s just not scary (or brutal) in the way that the audience for such a genre pop novel might expect.

But I believe I can fix that particular issue in the second draft. The point of the first draft is just to get the story down pat so you can turn around, rewrite it and fix all the issues. I really have to stop daydreaming and just drifting towards my goal, however.

I need to be a lot more focused.

The Conundrum That is Writing A Thriller

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The first novel I’m writing, at the moment at least, probably doesn’t fit safely within the “thriller” genre for no other reason than it’s just not dark enough. It’s just not my nature to write about dark, scary things. But I am well aware of the expectations of thriller genre readers.

So, as such, at some point in the process of writing this novel, I’m probably going to have to give significant thought to amping the darkness up significantly. As it stands, I have an interesting, intriguing story that will keep you reading…but I’m not so sure it’s really as dark and twisted as The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.

It is because of one specific scene in The Girl With Dragon Tattoo — if you’ve read the book, you immediately know which one I’m talking about — that makes it both extremely engaging and extremely problematic. The scene is what gets you hooked for the fate of Lisbeth Salander because you find yourself really caring about her. And, yet, the scene is so horrible, you feel kind of traumatized having been exposed to it in the first place.

What I imagine the heroine of my first novel looks like.

I have a few ideas as to how to am up the twisted, dark nature of this novel, but it’s not going to come easy. People are just too quick to make assumptions about you if you write something too terribly dark and twisted in your novels and people already think I’m bonkers.

It’s going to be a real struggle to flesh out the potentially darker elements of this story. I already been squeamish writing a specific scene which isn’t even all that bad — there’s no sex or gore — but I was kind of nervous that audience members, especially women, might be turned off by the implications of what was going on.

But, lulz, everyone — so far — that I’ve mentioned the scene to were blase. Only time will tell. I do know the general conceit of this six novel writing project is really, really good. But I’m going to have to focus on taking things to the next level by making it clear that I’m writing thrillers.

Of Marketing These Five Thrillers


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’m just daydreaming here, but I often find myself thinking about the marketing of these five novels and how that should change the novels themselves. One issue is, as it stands, the Olivia Munn-type character is the protagonist of only two of the novels. Then her son is the protagonist for two novels and then my Lisbeth Salander-type person is the hero of the last book.

This works, at least from a creative standpoint because I see the first three novels as a trilogy and the last two novels as the beginning a new series based around my personal interpolation of the Lisbeth Salander trope.

And, yet, at the heart of these five novels is the relationship between the Olivia Munn-type character and my Lisbeth Salander type character. But I sometimes find myself struggling with how all of this would be marketed. People want a character they know they’re going to come back to once they grow familiar with it and I wonder how marketing would deal with the shift in focus over the course of the series.

I personally think I’m overthinking things. The point is to tell a series of great stories that have an overall theme to them. I can’t get too worked up about the marketing of the stories if I do a good to great job telling the individual stories. And it’s not like people’s favorite character — if she becomes one — will be missing. She’ll still be there, it’s just the focus will be on her son, and, then, later a fucked up woman about Lisbeth Salander’s age in The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.

Imagine Olivia Munn playing this type of character (to some extent) and that would be the protagonist two novels in this series and the series’ overall heart.

And, I want to be clear, my interpolation of the Lisbeth Salander trope is a variation on a theme. The two characters are dramatically different, to the point that, again, only for marketing purposes might their similarities be enough to highlight.

Anyway, I have a long ways to go before I have to worry about such things in real terms. I have to fucking finish an actual first draft, for Christ’s sake. But every time I get closer to a serious first draft, I get closer to not embarrassing myself.

It’s just taken much, much, much longer than I expected because apparently my storying telling ability sucked a lot more than I realized when I began this process a few years ago.

These Five Novels Will Have A Lot of Heart


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’ve been doing a lot of writing today and I’m very pleased with what I’ve managed to come up with. These first few novels, as I keep saying, will have a lot to owe to Mare of Easttown. Even I am taken aback by how female-friendly from an audience perspective these novels may be. Or not. What the fuck do I know. I’m a middle aged white CIS male who should be neither seen nor heard.

But here we are, with me being my usual bonkers crank self, pontificating on shit I shouldn’t.

I’m working on the assumption that if I should actually manage to write the “break out” novel — which, in itself would be a miracle — that I will be canceled at some point soon after because my well documented views don’t always follow the media narrative. I believe what I believe and if you don’t like it, then fuck you. Wink.

But, like I said, I am pleased with how much heart these novels have. How much they at least try to accommodate the needs of the female audience. One thing I’m taken aback by is how this first novel is far, far more Mare of Easttown than the book that started all of this, The Girl Who Played With Fire.

At the moment, it really won’t be until the last two novels I’m working on, when we start what will hopefully be an open-ended thriller series, that the direct homage to Stieg Larsson’s work becomes obvious. But I have to make clear — I’m simply not as dark a write, by nature, as Larsson. I have used The Girl Who Played With Fire as my “textbook,” but it’s a real struggle for me to be as dark and serious as Larsson in, say, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.

Anyway. I’m going to throw myself into writing, reading and development this weekend. That, at least, is the plan.

Fuck this fucking storytelling “test.”

All Systems Go


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

All systems are go with either a real first draft or only-a-second-draft-because-of-my-huge-ego. I spend a few hours last night restructuring things and now I know what to do.

The story has a lot tighter chorology than I ever expected, but I came across some constraints within the logic of the story that I could never expected. But, the point is, this is going to be a very, very fast paced novel for no other reason than the reader is going to realize we’re talking events that take place over barely two weeks, if that.

Events are going to be so tight with this novel, that I’ve thought maybe have a time stamp on each scene might be helpful. But I’ve not decided to do that yet. But it definitely would remind readers that a lot of stuff is going on in just one day.

Anyway, I now am going to do two things. One, a lot of reading. Two, I’m going to try to try to go through the scenes of the first few chapters and do some development stuff with them so I can start writing at full speed in the next few days. But I want to really be prepared since I’m hoping this is going to be so good as to be a second draft that can have beta readers.

Meanwhile, I’m going to also begin to bounce around the other four novels in the series to see about moving them forward as well. I’m going to continue to study Stieg Larsson’s first two books to get some sense of how he did some things in a general way. The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo handles some time issues that I need to know how to handle in future books.

I would prefer all my future novels not take place within roughly two week span. I need to figure out how Larsson was able to have books that took place over a longer period of time.

So that’s where things stand. Let’s rock.

‘If You Have Time To Write, You Have Time To Read’


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’ve picked up a thriller that’s very much in the milieu of the four novels I’m developing and writing. It’s obviously, just like my project, very influenced by Stieg Larsson’s original Millennium series. What’s interesting is how different people take different things away from the series.

This book’s author obviously is leaning into the vigilante aspect of Lisbeth Salander’s personality. The novel is very well written, and, yet, it’s sufficiently different from what I’m working on that I don’t feel that threatened. The novel is, so far, pretty much a generic thriller that wants to create an American Lisbeth Salander.

The Icon.

I want to do that, too, but my interpretation of the Salander trope is dramatically — and I mean dramatically — different. In fact, now that I’m writing four novels, for the time being Mare Of Easttown is a bigger influence than Larsson.

And, I will note, that if you study The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, Salander isn’t really the hero of the story — that’s Mikael Blomkvist. The author of this book I’m reading wants to get straight into the story of his Salander-type character. And, what’s more he definitely seems to want to appeal to Jack Reacher fans, to the point that he has a quote from Lee Child in support of the book.

But a key element of Salander is she had a very weird upbringing that we gradually get to learn more about over the course of two books. With the book I’m reading now, we’re just plunged straight into the character’s vigilantism. One of the rules of thumb about writing a successful novel is, “Tell a old story in a new way or an new story in an old way.”

And, of course, there is the very real notion of “There’s nothing new under the sun.”

As such, I have to get over myself. If I was to come up with something that was completely and totally unique, a publisher wouldn’t know what to do with it marketing wise and it would turn readers off because they wouldn’t have anything to compare it to.

So, I need to chill.

It’s ok if someone has written something vaguely in the same vein as what I’m working on. It’s inevitable that someone would want to create an American Salander. For the time being, at least, it definitely seems I’m safe in continuing to develop and write these four novels. Each of the four novels is a very compelling story, enough so that I’m willing to throw my entire life into finishing them.

What’s more, the novels I’m working on are far more character driven than what I’ve read so far of this novel. From the first two chapters, it definitely seems as though the author is more concerned with the action adventure thriller elements of the Millennium series as opposed to the character elements that I find interesting.

Another thing — the thing that got me writing a novel — now novels — in the first place was my white hot rage against Trumplandia. That rage was always the thing that generated the energy necessary for me to write a novel. That need to address the bullshit of the Trump Era is another thing that definitely makes what I’m working on different than this book.

I’m obviously working against the headwinds of being older, not being formally educated in creative writing and not having gone to an Ivy League school, but lulz, fuck the haters.

Just About To Stabilize The Novel’s Outline…AGAIN


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I finally have figured out my hero’s motive and, as such, figured out the throughline of this first book in the two book story. The story is very personal and unique. The new interpretation of the story I’ve been struggling with for the last few years draws some on the structure of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.

I’m itching to start writing again, but I’m being stubborn and want to wait until I finish yet another full version of the outline before I do that. I don’t want to start writing only realize the only way to finish the outline is to throw out the beginning again for structural reasons.

Ugh.

But, at least tentatively, I’m about to lock down the outline again. Pretty much everything outside of the first act is done right now. Though there is a specific subplot I need to sprinkle through the second act so it makes sense that it comes roaring back in the third act.

Anyway. It’s quite a relief to finally figure out my hero’s motivation. I find myself digging even deeper into my personal life as this happens, however. I really need to make my hero Not Me. But this is just a first draft, so I think I can give myself a pass.

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.

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.