Tag: novel

‘Kill Your Darlings’

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I have managed to cut down my new first act of the new version of the thriller novel I’ve been working on for years to about 44 scenes or so. I’ve attempted to make the first act as simple as possible. I’m attempting to streamline things to the point that I don’t overwhelm readers with a lot of information.

All of this has reduced the word count down to something a little bit more manageable.

The novel is now going to be a far more a traditional murder-in-a-small-town type of affair. There is a lot more of a point to the novel, I think. Previously, the novel was something of a character study that didn’t seem to have much of a point to it.

I haven’t yet gotten to the part of the new version of the novel that is the second draft of the novel. Things may slow down dramatically at that point as I try to figure out how to essentially write a third draft to the novel.

But the key thing is — I now have a first act. Before, I just started the novel at a point in the story where there was a lot of information thrown at the reader. Now, there is an entire act before the murder happens, which is what I wanted.

This is similar to what happens in The Girl Who Played With Fire. I like that structure style for some reason. I like the idea of there being a whole act that leads up to the murder instead of just opening with a body being discovered or it happening in the first few chapters.

‘A New Hope’

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Oh boy. In the name of not throwing too much at the reader at one time — and to made the first act more manageable, I’ve decided to yet again change the beginning of the novel in a dramatic fashion.

Now, a lot of things are either alluded to or happen “off camera” so things are smoother and not so overwhelming. But I do think I’m probably going to have to do a lot more rewriting than I would prefer.

And, all the same problems that this novel has relative to modern expectations still exist — I change POVs within chapters, etc. But my hope is that people who remember Stieg Larsson’s work will read it and say, “Oh, I get it, this is just like The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.”

That’s the hope, at least.

And this remains a passion project. I really, really need to piviot some of my free time to the other, more traditionally marketable novels I’m working on. But there comes a point when I just have to shrug and say, “Either you like this passion project and want to read it, or you don’t.”

I have my vision for the passion project and I’m sticking to it, come what may.

Kook Tax Worries (Again)

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Now that I’m back at it with the thriller passion project, I again find myself dwelling on the kook tax problem. In the past, whenever I’ve tried to get “serious” people to look at my novel, they inevitably roll their eyes and find some reason to beg off.

I’m just too big a kook in their opinion to be worth their time. And in the specific instance of this novel it’s not going to help that my heroine is a part-time sex worker. But the latest version of the novel tones that down a great deal and — I feel — the sex worker element isn’t nearly as gratuitous as it once was.

At least, I hope that comes across as the case.

My only hope, at the moment, is to lean into the use of AI to improve the novel instead of having to rely upon humans who think I’m a weirdo. But there is going to a come a point when I’m going to have to piviot to human eyes and things might get bumpy.

But I really do believe in this novel, even if I’m going to be old as fuck, even if I get the damn thing published. Unless the Singularity happens in the next few years and I can live to be 500, even if I get the success from this novel I so desperately hope for, the context will be a lot more different than when I started this project.

I won’t be able to run around with 24-year-old women like I had hoped, but rather, I will just be content that I actually proved the haters wrong and I hope I can start to work on other projects.

Now The Word Count Problem Is Back

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The novel that my novel is meant to be an homage to, The Girl Who Played With Fire, is, as I recall, about 160,000 words. That is way, way too long for my novel for a number of reasons, the biggest being it would be my first novel.

And, yet, here I am — it definitely looks like I could blow past the 100,000 sweetspot of a first novel in a pretty big way.

I don’t know yet because I haven’t gotten that far in the process — I work in terms of scenes, not word count, so I don’t get around to finding out how many words something I’ve worked on is until pretty late in the process.

I have been very careful in the other projects I have been working on to do everything in my power to get them in at about 100,000 words.

Despite all that, I still am fixated on this passion project to the detriment of the other novels I should be working on. So, all this time I should be using on a scifi novel of about 100,000 words, I’m using on a thriller that could be close to 160,000 words.

Yikes!

But, like I said, I don’t know yet. It could be that the novel — which is probably going to be more than 100,000 words no matter what — could come in at something closer to 120,000 or maybe 140,000.

I’m really enjoying myself, though, with this passion project. Once I get into the second act, I think things are going to slow down a great deal ’cause I’m going to be working with the second draft material. I probably am going to have to root around in that second draft material a lot to have it synch up with all the changes I made between the second and third draft of the novel.

I Really Need A Backup Novel

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

As it stands, I’m going through the latest version of my passion project at a nice little clip. So fast that it’s at least possible that I will finish this fourth draft soon enough to query in about a year.

That is, of course, unless the Singularity happens and or Trump’s stupidity causes the country to collapse into chaos.

But as all of this is happening, I continue to realize I probably need a backup novel that is a bit more marketable and maybe doesn’t have stripper elements to it. I have a number of scifi novels done to varying degrees and pretty much all I need to do is just sit down and burrow through an outline and finish something, anything — at least a first draft.

And, yet, the call of the passion project thriller is just too strong most of the time.

I really want this homage to Stieg Larsson to be my first novel. And, yet, I know I probably can write a really good scifi novel if I just get over myself and focus. It’s all very difficult for various reasons.

I think what I may do is edit the first act of the thriller then with that as a place to pause, I will piviot to one or several of the other novels and use that distraction to clear my head.

‘True North’

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The one book that has been my guiding light, my true north throughout the years and years I’ve been working no this thriller is The Girl Who Played With Fire. I’ve studied it every which way.

It took me forever to figure out its structure and, in fact, it wasn’t until I learned it was mean to be one huge novel with its successor that I understood what what was going on. (The two novels are connected by a cliffhanger.)

I bring this up because I’ve printed out the first act of the novel so I can edit it and it’s kind of long at about 63 scenes. (I have no idea how many words it is, I go by scenes, not word count.) But The Girl Who Played With Fire’s first act — if you include a longish prelude-like part is about 70 scenes, so I don’t feel so bad about it. And I’m still at a point in the process when if I somehow get an editor they could probably figure out how to cut a lot from the first act.

Once I read over the first act, then I’m going into the first half of the second half and that’s where I have to begin to bring in the second draft of what was supposed to be the second novel in the series. I’ve decided to make the first book in the series a more traditional murder-in-a-small town novel as opposed to something that is clearly just setting up a bigger universe.

I still have A LOT of work to do, but I’m feeling pretty confident that I will be in a position to query the novel in about a year, maybe. Of course, my life could totally be turn upside down by this or that unexpected event — and I’m going to be really old to try to get a first novel published — but, lulz.

There is also the issue of the name. I have pretty accessible name I want to use, but it’s so generic that I’m SURE someone else has already published a novel by that name. I have a more unique name, but it’s not as accessible and at least one person has rolled their eyes when I told them what it is.

I just don’t know on that front. I think for the time being I’m going to assume I’m using the less accessible name unless I get an agent and they tell me it just won’t sell.

You Have To Believe, Sometimes

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I just have to believe when it comes to this novel. I have all these other novels I want to work on, but the central passion project is something I have to just believe in.

The main reason for this is I’m using a lot of the structural elements of Stieg Larsson’s work — multiple POVs within chapters being one of them — and I keep feeling insecure about that. That’s why I think of this novel as a passion project — I really need a back up or two that will be more marketable in a traditional manner.

Sometimes I just feel really meh and don’t do anything for a few days because what I really want to do — which is to focus exclusively on the passion project — I know I probably shouldn’t do. I need a backup plan, but I just sometimes don’t feel like it.

Ugh.

Trying Something New With The Novel

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.

Why It’s Taken Me So Long With This Thriller

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

A number of things have happened over the last nearly-decade of development and writing I’ve been doing on this thriller to delay things.

One thing is I really have had no idea what I was doing and so I made just about every mistake you can think of along the way. What’s more, I was doing all it in a vacuum, so I had no idea if anything I was doing was any good, other than what my gut might tell me at any particular moment.

Another thing that happen was I kept spinning off novels or re-imagining the whole thing in a new way to the point where I was pretty much starting over. So, in a sense, I’ve actually written a number of novels over the years, just no one novel was good enough to actually query.

And, as if to stress this point, last year about this time I did, in fact, finish a novel. But none of the usual suspects that I gave my novel to over the years liked it. The biggest complaint being it was too oversexed — a lot of people did not like the new stripper element that I’ve put into things.

But AI has come to the rescue, to some extent. I’m really leaning into AI to help with development with the latest version of the novel. I hope to wrap this version up by spring 2026, if I haven’t been pushed out a window by ICE or the FBI for ranting about what a cocksucker Trump is. (It could happen, the way things are going.)

Anyway. I finally believe in the novel again and I’m pressing forward. I have half a dozen other novel and short story ideas, but none of them really have made me all that excited. Or, at least, not excited to the point that I want to work on them instead of the thriller.

So, we’ll see.

Focusing On The First Chapter Of The Thriller At The Moment

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’m finally throwing myself back into the novel, the first of what is hoped to be a six novel project. I keep expecting to read in the trades that someone has stolen a creative march on me, because I’m taking so long with this novel but…lulz…this novel is so personal that maybe I’m in luck.

I’m really leaning into AI to help with development of this draft of the novel. I’m trying to use as little AI generated copy as possible — I’m only using AI for development.

But I’ve got to hurry up. I can’t just spin my wheels forever on this project, I have to produce something, anything sooner rather than later. Yet, I back to believing in this project with all my heart, which is what I need to actually get it done before I drop dead.