by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
All my huge decisions with this novel, which has taken me years and years and YEARS to write, have happen on the fly — I just randomly decide to change everything.
And the latest edition of this happening is no different. After a few days of struggling with rewriting the novel, I decided to make a bold move — I’m turning it into a traditional murder mystery. The only way to do this was to lop two thirds of the novel off (at least in word count) and make the second half of the second act the first act of the new version of the novel. I don’t know how much of the old third act I’m going to be able to save, but it probably is a fair amount.
This idea also works things actually happen in this part of the old novel, unlike most of the earlier part of the novel which is just a lot of people sitting around, talking, waiting for something to happen.
So, I think I MIGHT be able to go through what I’ve been able to salvage of the old version of the novel at a pretty fast clip — maybe . Then the hard work begins because I’m going to have to rummage around and find the murder-in-a-small-town stuff I’ve already written that I was saving for the second novel in the series.
My biggest concern now is that, lulz, the trick ending isn’t going to be as satisfying as it should be, given audience expectations. But I think I can probably think of SOMETHING to make the ending more engaging, one way or another, I just have to actually get to that point of the project so I can do it.
So, in general, the point of this phase of things is to just write and develop as fast as possible so I can think seriously of querying in about a year. I also continue to have half a dozen other ideas that are rolling around in my head that are really good.
