by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
Today I have had a real struggle on my hands, trying to figure out how to keep the first act down to about ~30 scenes. I have all these completely arbitrary rules of thumb that I expect of myself on a structural basis that can really make it seem like I’m just treading water.
My heroine in my mind looks like a younger version of Nicole Zellweger — sorta.
It doesn’t help that as I work my way through the outline, new and better ways of laying the plot out on the page keep coming to me. This causes a cascading series of events to happen where I have to move things around. This happens a lot of late as I really try to make the use of the multi-POV style intentional. Using more than one POV is interesting to me and I really feel it brings a lot to the table storytelling-wise, but the only reason why I started using it in the first place was I wanted to do what Stieg Larsson did in his work
The point is — I want this novel to feel like an old brown shoe to anyone who has read Larsson’s works in the past. And, yet, at the same time this novel is definitely it’s own thing for a number of reasons. I’ve read at least one Larsson imitator who seems to really want to lean into the villante element of Lisbeth Salander’s personality.
And, I get it.In a way, I suppose that is the most interesting part of the original Larsson stories is what a bad-ass Salander was. But after much, much, much reflection and not a little consternation, I’ve finally settled on my characters to the point that things are really beginning to flow.
They aren’t just “moods” anymore, I now understand them well enough –and their motivations — that once I have written out my scene summaries for a few scenes, that I can sit down and natively write out scenes without too much trouble.
I like having scene summaries prepared because I like have a guide as to what is going to be in the scene before I write it. In some ways it’s a crutch, but it also allows me to game out clearly what is going to be in a scene before I actually write it. I have discovered more ways to make a meh scene sing by having a scene summary already laid out to follow.
I have managed to whittle down the length of the novel — or, at least the number of scenes — to the point that I have a decent chance of being at least within shouting distance of the ~100,000 word sweetspot. But it could be that even with the lower number of scenes that I will still blow past that sweetspot As such, I continue to mull a backup novel that would be built on the assumption of strictly being between 80,000 and 100,000 words.
One of the biggest improvements to the story is I’m really conscious of the need to make the POV character in any scene the person who pushes the plot of the novel along. So, one of the reasons why it sometimes feels like I’m treading water is I game out a new version of the outline, only to find as I actually write scenes that my POV character is….rather passive.
Anyway. I’m beginning to grow alarmed at how slow things are moving. Here I am, 10 days into the final push to wrap up the second draft and I haven’t even finished the first act yet. But, hopefully, by making myself really self aware of this particular issue, that I will be prompted speed the process up.
That’s my hope, at least. I really don’t want to wake up on July 1st and STILL be in the first act, spinning my wheels. Something’s gotta give. I’m not going to live forever.
