Month: May 2020

Things May Begin To Move Fast Now With The Novel

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

After what feels like an eternity, I think I’m just about to see development speed up rather quickly. I have a script consultant now and he’s really helping me see some major problems with the story. I’m obsessed with character now. I feel like I’m getting much, much closer to filling my previously empty vessels of characters with some substance.

I continue to use Stieg Larsson’s The Girl Who Played With Fire as my text book. But it’s growing more and more of simply a stepping off point. My personal ability to tell a story is improving dramatically. Or, put another way, I’m finally reaching a level of storytelling that placates my own brutal personal editor.

If I was better educated and a better writer, I would say I had a chance at writing something as good as Gillian Flynn’s debuted novel Sharp Objects. But I didn’t go to the right school and my actual writing ability is rather mediocre, so I am trying to lower my expectations accordingly.

But I think it’s at least possible that I may have figured out some existential issues with the story. If that is, in fact, the case then things should move a lot faster.

Wish me luck

V-Log: Idle Rambling About The #Novel I’m Developing

Some thoughts.

Of Trying To Make My Heroine More ‘Accessible’



by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

While I love Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy, there are a few weaknesses with it that eat away at me. One is while Lisbeth Salander is iconic, there are a few problems with her that are off-putting. One is she’s supposed to be some sort of dark superhacker with Asperger’s who is not very easy to get along with.

We fall in love with her in large part because of graphic, horrific scene that I hate. But it is so bad that you keep worrying about her fate as the books progress.

All of this has led me to want to create a heroine who is far, far more accessable. My heroine, like Lisbeth Salander, has a fucked up personal history, but she is, natively, essentially a manic pixie dreamgirl. But for events beyond her control, she would be more Natalie Portman’s character in “Garden State” than Lisbeth Salander. My inspiration for this is how you sometimes hear about a woman who went to law school specifically to free her brother from jail. I always wondered, “Now what? She got her brother free, but she’s still a lawyer.”

Anyway, now that I’m learning about character that concept is, at least, within my reach now. In the past, it was something of a daydream. I’m feeling pretty pumped that maybe I might actually pull this off. But I still have a huge amount of reading to do, a huge amount of work to do.

It will be interesting to see what this story finally looks like. But I have a feeling once I nail down character, the actual writing may begin to go far, far faster than it has to date.

Learning About Character Development In Fiction Is Changing My Life



by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The only reason why I’m obsessing about developing the characters in my novel so late in the game is I finally know what the story is about. As such, I now realize I have a strong plot and a strong canon, but when it comes to my characters I pretty much have empty vessels that walk around the other two without any motivation.

I am hoping to change that by cramming as much as I can about how to build not just characters, but people. I want my characters to be “real” in the minds of my audience. And the more I look into how to do that, the more I realize that’s a pretty road ahead. But it does help a lot that I’m drawing upon the resource of people I knew in Seoul 12 years ago. They were a pretty kooky lot — as was I — and so now I have to spend some time reading, reading, reading about things to flesh out these characters which to date have simply been placeholder “moods” that I used to think about the plot and canon.

Or, put another way, this is yet another re-calibration of this project. The story is going to get much, much better now. I’m giving myself some slack time to simply read as much as possible about how to build character, as well as the things these characters would be interested in, before I get back to writing.

I hope by the end of this process to have near-absolute control over my characters so they do what I need them to do in the context of my vision for the story. (Or, in this case, one story, two books.) That’s the goal, at least. I can’t keep spinning my wheels forever.

So, the next few days will be spent reading up on a lot of things I’ve thought about reading about, but have put off. No more. I’m really cramming about the interaction between plot, canon and character so I can turn around and write something good enough that people like, actually give me an opinion when they read it, instead of just silence.