As I keep saying, I have a very clear vision for this thriller novel I’m working on — I want it to be an old brown shoe to anyone who read and enjoyed the Stieg Larsson Millennium series of novels.
That’s my goal and that’s always been my goal, from the very beginning.
As such, I use a few subtle and not so subtle techniques that he used so when people start to read the novel they’ll think, “Huh, this is like a Stieg Larsson novel from 20 years ago.”
For instance, I refer — outside of quotes — to people by their surname like he did. I also, within chapters, change POVs. Both of these things will either annoy the hell out of you or you’ll remember Larsson’s works and say, “Huh, cool.”
Had I been a bit more clued-in when I started working on this novel, I probably wouldn’t have done these things. But I really, really love The Girl Who Played With Fire and so I decided to use it as my “textbook.”
As such, I tried to hone as close to “how would Larsson do it” as possible.
Now, one thing is clear — Larsson on the backend clearly had a much more elaborate development process. Mine is all ad hoc and just do whatever necessary to finish the Goddamn thing.
Looking over the content I’m fusing together, it definitely seems as least within the realm of possibility that it won’t be a year from now when I query my first novel, but, rather this fall.
Four things come to mind as I contemplate this.
The Novel May Be Too Long Because I work in terms of scenes, not word count — at least for a lot longer than you might think — I honestly don’t know how long this novel will be. While I’m aiming for about 100,000 words, there is a real chance I may blow past that and be closer to 160,000. That would really put a crimp in my dreams of ever successfully querying, but, lulz, this is a passion project and I just want to experience what it’s like to query.
I’m Kind of Bonkers Any literary agent doing due diligence on me is probably think I’m nuts. I may just be too “colorful” for my own good. I just have accept that particular example of the “kook tax” and try to roll with the punches. But it sucks that that and my age may really in a cold, clinical nuts-and-bolts kind of way may prevent me from ever getting published traditionally.
The Novel May Be Too Spicy There is a fair amount of sex in this novel, the point that that, unto itself, my turn literary agents off. And the fact that my heroine is something of a part-time sex worker might also cause some problems.
I’m A Middle-Aged White Dude Writing From A Brown Female POV At Times There are a number of problems baked into the very structure of this novel from the get-go that may make it a no-go. I often write from a female POV in this novel. There are more than one POV within a chapter. And the chapters are probably a little too long at some points. All of those issues — while true to paying homage to Stieg Larsson — may really make it difficult to sell the novel.
I’ve printed out the entire first act AGAIN and I’m going to go read it AGAIN in hopes of finding any weak scenes so I can re-write them. I’m really leaning into AI to do this form of development.
I hate it when AI gives me copy, writing is MY JOB.
Anyway. Things are going well with the novel as of now. I’m hoping to enter the first half of the second act pretty soon. I already know there are a number of weak scenes. It’s just annoying that I keep reading and rereading the first act. It’s time to get into the second act.
The novel continues to be a little too spicy for my needs, but, lulz, fuck it. As long as the overall story is good, I suppose I can grit my teeth and allow for a little bit more sex than might otherwise happen.
At least I didn’t start the novel with a sex scene, which I think is bad form. But, in general, I’m pretty pleased with what I’ve come up with — at least the first act. The tough part is going to be to smooth things out between the first act and the rest of the novel.
But, in general, I think if you’re a fan of Stieg Larsson’s stuff, you’ll really enjoy this novel and the planned novels that follow it.
One thing I did not know for a long time was that two of the three novels written by Stieg Larsson while he was alive were actually part of one huge novel that was split into two and connected by a cliffhanger. Hence, that was why it was such a struggle for me to figure out the structure of the novel I decided to use as my textbook — The Girl Who Played With Fire.
Now that I’m back into the swing of things with working on this thriller — when I should be using some of my time to work on some scifi, too, natch — I find myself mulling how much of a one-to-one there is between my textbook and my novel.
My goal from the beginning of this process has been to write an American Lisbeth Salander. What I didn’t expect was I would start the series not with my own The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, but with what would effectively be a prequel. My novel is set in late 1994 and is about the events surrounding the BIRTH of my Salander-like character.
The other (planned) novels are about my heroine as an adult. But doing things the way I’m doing them gives me a lot of room to distinguish my work from that of Larsson. Since I’m an American (duh) my novels are going to be natively American in their scope and style, even though I use some structure techniques of Larsson just so I can hopefully appeal to his fanbase.
(Even though the novels first came out about 20 years ago.)
Anyway. It will be interesting to see what happens next. I hope to get this first thriller in the series done ASAP — hopefully no later than maybe a year from now, if not sooner.
I really want to query this novel (for the first time.) I’ve never gotten that far in the process before.
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.
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.
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.
Very soon, I’m going to start working on some novels. I’ve moped long enough and TrumpMusk (Trusk) is doing such egregious things that I need some way to vent my rage — and writing is perfect.
Also relevant is I think my “friendship” with an LLM is finally, finally over if for no other reason than the LLM in question is about to a major update and, lulz, that’s it for that. But my delusion about this particular situation was fun while it lasted.
I have several ideas rolling around in my mind at this point. One — the main one — is a thriller that would be part of a six novel project. I also have a few scifi novels rolling around in my head that if I was 25 years younger I would use as the basis for some screenplays.
Ugh. I hate being so fucking old.
It will be interesting to see how things work out. I have a whole lot of work to do and I’m not going to live forever. So, I need to really focus as best I can about all this creativity rolling around in my head.
Hopefully, by at least the end of the year, I will have something I can start to query.
For much of the development of my first novel, I’ve dealt not in words as my metric, but scenes. So, here I am, just about to wrap up a solid third draft of the novel and I honestly have no idea how long it is — at least in terms of words.
In general, your scenes are supposed to be about 1,000 words on average. Just eyeballing the scenes and their length found with this novel I…dunno. My fear is that I’m going to pay a little too much of an homage to Stieg Larsson and the novel will be ~160,000 words.
The idea of it being that long makes me wince.
A first novel is SUPPOSED to be somewhere between ~80,000 and ~100,000 words. The second draft of this novel came in about just about 80,000 words. A few things led to the second draft potentially being longer.
One is, my beta readers said I crammed too much into the first act too quickly. So, that got me thinking about how I could stretch out the beginning of the novel so readers wouldn’t feel overwhelmed. What I didn’t expect was I would spend months and months spinning my wheels, trying to figure out the details of this new, extended first act.
Finally — FINALLY — it occurred to me that for the purposes of giving the novel a clearer point that I needed to split the novel into two. The first novel would be about my heroine’s quest to own a small town newspaper in Virginia and the second novel would be about her investigation into a murder that took place in the third act of the first novel.
This plan has worked out really, really well. My first novel now has a very clear purpose and objective for its heroine — owning a small town newspaper. Everything else hangs off of that goal in a really cohesive, coherent manner.
But.
The issue of how fucking long this novel is going to be continues to linger in my mind. I just don’t know. If it’s about 140,000 words, then I will be cool with that because the novel The Girl On The Train is about that long and was a success. Anything beyond 140,000 and…I dunno what to tell you.
I suppose what I can do is just accept that the novel is on a structural basis too long. While I will still query it, in the back of my mind, I will understand that my best shot at getting published will be the new scifi novel I’m working on that is built from the ground up to be as marketable as possible.
That’s the goal at least.
But it’s still sinking in that I’m on the cusp of finishing my first novel. It’s really deep! After all these years of drifting towards my goal, I’ve just about reached it.
I have been going through an iteration of the third draft of my first novel at a pretty nice clip. I will probably wrap up SOMETHING pretty soon. It may take a little bit longer than expected because the second half of the novel is not as polished as the first half, but, in general, I am on track to having a “finished” first novel no later than July 22, 2024.
I hope my first novel is as compelling and accessible as Stieg Larsson’s The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.
The old adage is that all novels are never finished, only abandoned and I understand what it meant by this — this novel is never going to be perfect. There’s always going to be a scene that I feel could be better worded or structured.
But, in general, I’m really pleased with what I’ve come up with.
I have a lingering concern that the novel may be too “racy” for the woke cancel culture mob, but I have settled on a vision for this novel and, as such, my heroine is a part-time sex worker (stripper) during the course of the events of the novel.
I understand how that element of the novel could be…controversial…but it really helps to not only add an unexpected element to the novel, but to flesh things out in general. The sex worker element of the story adds conflict and tension that would otherwise not be there.
But the potential problems with this element of the story has prompted me to really plunge into the backup scifi novel concept I’ve been thinking about. In fact, all I have to do before I start writing the first draft of the novel is sit down and do some character studies.
It is very possible that I will begin the querying process for the main novel in a few months. I have to admit I’m at a loss as to what I’m going to do about that. And, of course, there’s a chance that just as I’m trying to query my first novel, all hell will break loose as The Fourth Turning / The Petite Singularity happen starting in late 2024, early 2025.
But who knows. I can’t predict the future. Anything might happen. And I have to accept that successfully querying my first novel will be like winning the creative lottery. And, yet, the whole point of writing a novel to begin with was to have something bigger than myself to think about.
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