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.
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.
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.
