by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
After a number of years of hard work and spinning my wheels in a very conspicuous manner, I finally feel like I have the framework I need to achieve something akin to my original goal — entertain the same audience as Stieg Larsson did with his original Millennium series.
It’s not a one-to-one for a number of reasons.
He is far darker than I am. And I think he was probably a conspiracy theorist. And, what’s more, he breaks a lot of rules of modern novel storytelling that just don’t have the luxury of doing. I mean, I can’t just spend 135 pages getting to the fucking point like he did with The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.
As such, I have structured my first novel in a far more traditional manner. My inciting incident is far closer to the beginning of the story. It’s taken me so much hard work and trial-and-error to get to this point, in large part I was using Larsson’s work The Girl Who Played With Fire as my “textbook.”
While I love that novel — so much that I can read it over and over and over again — it’s structure is totally fucked up and it’s simply way, way too long for what I need to use as a guide. I have a strict “sweetspot” of between 80,000 to 120,000 words to play with.
I have a lot of work still to do. And one key element I have to do is read. I have to grit my teeth and read some books that will help give my characters, well, character. Quirks. Color. You name it. I have a number of books that if I actually sat down and fucking read them would really improve the end product. As it stands, I have a general vision for my characters, but, too often, they just “moods” that with character traits that exist solely for expediency’s sake.
But recent my self-confidence with this project has improved. I have finally found the land over the horizon that I was looking for so long.
