Tag: novel writing

It’s So Nice To Have No One To Tell Me ‘No’ When It Comes To Writing These 4 Novels


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I really have a very unique situation going on in my life. The key thing about it is –I have no one to tell me “no” when it comes to my creative life. If I want to go from one, to two to four novels, I can and I don’t have a wife or girlfriend to wince and say, “Honey, maybe you should get a short story published first?”

Fuck that.

As such, I’ve spend several years improving my writing and storytelling ability. The learning curve for writing a novel was far more severe than I could ever possibly imagined. But things have finally clicked for me.

I still have a shit tone of reading to do to flesh out my characters, but this first book in the series should go (hopefully) pretty quick now. I feel a lot of pressure because I have three more books to write as soon as possible.

This is a good thing, however, because snap, snap, I’m mortal and Stieg Larsson dropped dead within days of selling three — not four — novels. I feel like I’m tempting the writing fates at this point. Is the same thing going to happen to me if I get what I want (which is sell these four novels via the traditional publishing method.)

Anyway, I’m really enjoying myself. I do wish I could speed the process up some. To that, however, would require me not to be so hard on myself. But I have very, VERY high expectations for myself and, as such, the outline I keep working on collapses on almost a daily basis.

Wish me luck.

I’m Quite Pleased With The Universe I’ve Created For This Thriller Series


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Things are going really well with the four novel series I’m working on because all four books are compelling stories. But a lot — and I mean A LOT — could go wrong at any moment.

But you have to just put your head down and get to work at some point. You can freeze forever because of what MIGHT happen. Worry about what is actually know, what is not known.

I will admit that some of the aspects of this huge universe makes me nervous. And, yet, even the parts that make me nervous can be used in an interesting, compelling manner. I feel a little bit like what I imagine Freddy Mercury did when he was putting Bohemian Rhapsody together and everyone thought he was nuts.

I know in my mind what the vision is and how it will ultimately look like, but if you look at it right now as an outsider you might scratch your head and say, “But why start the series THEN?”

It makes sense in the context of the over all story. I feel compelled to tell the two stories set in the past because they’re compelling and they explain, with great detail, how this otherwise surreal little community came to be.

The biggest problem I have is forcing myself not to be so cruel to myself. I have a huge amount of self-imposed pressure on me right now — I need to knock out these four books ASAP, then turn around and do it all over again so I can let beta readers look at things.

This is a huge, huge project — which is exact what I wanted when I started all of this.

Of Prequels


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I mentioned to someone who has read the first part of the (now third) novel in the series about doing a two prequels. First, she had no idea what a “prequel” was in the first place. I think I was able to get across that I’m writing two new books that happen BEFORE what I’ve given her but are still in the same fictional universe.

But she was very pleased with what she read from me the last time I sent her something. This makes me very happy — it shows that I have, in fact, gotten better. A lot better. This makes me ecstatic.

Yet, as I struggled to explain to her, she knows me and, as such, even though she’s seen a lot of improvement, she still grades me on a curve. If someone like, say, a literary agent, were to read it cold, I’m still nowhere near my copy being good enough. I have, like, three more versions to finish before I get to that point.

What’s more, now I have *four* books to go through that entire process with.

But I’m really feeling the pressure to hurry up and do just that. The pressure to produce something, anything is getting pretty intense now. And I am writing a lot at the moment. I do like the how now I have an even bigger task ahead of me. I have a huge ego and I’m very ambitious — and motivated — so I it’s just a matter of focus at this point.

Things Are Getting Really Good With The Novel’s Development


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’m finally just about where I want to be with the novel. At least on a developmental basis. The first act is pretty stable at this point, as is the third act. It’s the second act that I still have some blank spaces left in the outline. But in the next day or so, I hope to rework it to such an extent that I can fill those blanks and start writing with gusto again.

I finally feel like I have laid out the proper structure for the novel. One of the crucial things I had to do was stop following the structure of Stieg Larsson’s The Girl Who Played With Fire so closely. My story just doesn’t fit its structure. As such, when I finally figured out the story I wanted to tell and how I wanted to tell it, the novel is it’s own thing now, not just overwrought fan fiction.

Once I sort the second act out, things should move a lot faster when it comes to the actual writing. I have a lot of reading to do, still, to flesh out some of the characterizations. I keep punting on reading because I’m nervous I’m going to read something that makes me throw everything out again. I’ve done that so many times — and so often felt like I was spinning my wheels — that it’s very frustrating.

And, yet, the only way to give life to my characters is to do a lot of reading. I hope to at least try to get back into the habit of reading a lot again in the near future. It’s just so difficult to do when my entire life has become consumed with developing and writing this novel.

But, in general, the structure of this novel is really, really strong. My goal is to write a first draft that’s so stable that when I write the second draft all I’ll have to do is just rewrite everything, I won’t really have to mess with the actual structure of the story. You’re supposed to give yourself a month between the first and second drafts and I think I’ll spend that month working on the second book in this two book story.

I wish I could follow in Stieg Larsson’s footsteps (minus the dying of a heart attack, of course) and finish three novels, but that’s just not how it worked out. I have a prequal (or two) already mapped out in my mind, but those would only be written if I manage to sell these two books and they’re popular enough that people want to know what happened before the events they depict.

I keep looking at the outline, even with all the gaps and am quite pleased. It’s taken me about three years to get this point, but I finally see land just over the horizon. I really hope to get to writing again soon.

The Struggle With Word Count


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Generally, from what I’ve read, it seems a thriller’s “sweet spot” is about 100,000 words. I read a comment on Facebook from someone who said *40,000* was what the industry wanted and I call bullshit — that’s barely more than your typical novella. It’s comments like that that make one feel more stupid than before you read them.

But anyway, I’m shooting for something no longer than 140,000 for each book I’m working on. It was when I wrote the whole story out as one book and it came out to be 200 scenes or 200,000 words that I decided to split the story into two, ending the first book with a cliffhanger.

The reason word count is so touchy for me is I have the structure of these two novels mapped out after about three years and I hate the idea that after all this hard work, they’ll be rejected not because of my bad writing but because they’re just too fucking long.

But I’m prepared to self-publish if need be. I just know I’m working really hard to make these two novels as fast a read as possible, so hopefully a literary agent will notice that and forgive me for how long they are.

Only time will tell, I guess.

The Status Of The Novel — Late April, 2021


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Things are going quite well with the novel right now. Things are moving along pretty well. I’m just about to enter into the second act, AGAIN in yet another first draft.

I can feel myself improving as a storyteller each time I attempt a first draft. Things are moving faster now because a lot of things I’ve been brooding over have clicked. My vision makes a lot more sense for no other reason than I’ve just written so much that I’ve finally been able to get a hang of writing a novel.

I continue to worry about someone out-of-the-blue stealing a creative march on me, but there’s little I can do about it. In hindsight, I would have been far more secretive about what I’ve been working on. But this was my first serious attempt at writing a novel so I made a lot of mistakes in more ways than one. If the worst does happen, I have half a dozen other concepts I can pivot to after the grieving process is over.

One thing I need to do is read a lot more. A whole lot more. I have all these books I bought with the best of intentions. But I struggle to tear my attention away from producing content enough so I can consume it. Yet some of the books are ones I really, really need to read to improve the overall experience of the novel.

So, I guess I’ll soon enough force myself to do all this reading I’ve been putting off.

An aspect of this novel (actually two novels, one story) is how it toys with the tropes of the Trump Era. Even though the Trump Era is over (for the time being?) I think by the time I’m trying to sell these two novels that people are going to be thinking about the Trump Era again because politics will be on people’s minds again.

At least, that’s my thinking.

A lot is going on with these two novels. A whole lot. I’m really throwing everything I got at them in various ways. I’ve split the story into two because I checked the number of scenes for the entire story and it was way too close to 200 for my liking. If you figure each scene is about 1,000 words, then that would be a 200,000 word novel, which is just too long.

And, the way I have it mapped out in my mind, I have a solid cliffhanger at the end of the first book. I’m still in the delusional phase of development and writing, however.

It won’t be until I attempt to query a literary agent that the delusional phase of all of this will come to an end.

If These Walls Could Talk


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’m EXTREMELY self-conscious any time I find myself writing a female character, doubly so when I have to think up what I imagine women say when they’re alone (say, in the bathroom) and are talking about men.

It’s a situation fraught with the potential for disaster. I just can’t win. How do I know what women say in such a private situation? I’ve never been there and it would never happen even if I was there because, well, I’m a man. So, I have to use my imagination. (Duh.)

The only solution to this insecurity, as best I can tell, is to be really, really self-conscious about it and also very conservative about any assumptions I might make. I can’t have an agenda. I strictly stay within what I can maybe reverse engineer from what I know about women (what little I know) and then have in the front of my mind, “WHAT WOULD OLIVIA WILDE AND JESSICA CHESTAIN THINK OF THIS TEXT.”

That’s all I got. That’s the only way I can think of to not have women tittering on Twitter about how a doofus, clueless man AGAIN didn’t write female characters well.

Of My #Novel’s ‘Textbook’


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I have long said that Stieg Larsson’s The Girl Who Played With Fire is my “textbook” for writing this novel. But recently any connection between the two works is growing ever more tenuous.

I say this because as my storytelling ability has grow stronger, the more I realize my story is so much different than Larsson’s story that using anything specific — on a structural level — from The Girl Who Played With Fire isn’t all that applicable anymore.

Anyway. Right now, the only thing stopping me from throwing myself back into the novel is the damn election. Once that’s out of the way — one way or another — I’m going to really go as quickly as possible.

#Writing A #Novel Is Hard Work


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Things are really beginning to stabilize with the rebooted novel. But at the same time, it’s beginning to sink in the amount of hard work I’m going to have to put into it. I’m really looking very closely at how Stieg Larsson did The Girl Who Played With Fire. And, yet, at the same time, my story and his story share only a genre. Otherwise, the intention of the two novels could not be more different.

I just don’t get how he got away with so much exposition and backstory upfront. I don’t have that luxury. I can’t really follow his work too close to the specifics of scenes structure and so forth because I need to get to the point a lot quicker than he did in that novel. And my novel is a first novel in a potential series, while The Girl Who Played With Fire is the second.

But I definitely with this rebooted version of my novel understand that if you have a big universe like I do, that you don’t just throw it at the audience in one big shot. You have to methodically begin to roll out your universe in a way that keeps them reading.

As I keep saying, I have no idea what I’m doing, so in my insecurity I’m using The Girl Who Played With Fire as my “textbook.” I hope things will go a lot faster with writing from now on. But I have to be dogged in my drive to finish this work up as quickly as possible.

My lingering fear is the result of the upcoming election — whatever it may be — will cause the conceit of the novel to seem quaint. But you can’t edit a blank page, as they say.

Can A Crank Like Me Sell A Novel?


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I am well aware that I come off as an Internet crank. Ok, you got me. I come up with weird ideas. There are plenty of reasons to dismiss me as just an over opinionated rando in the middle of nowhere.

And, yet, I know I’ve got lightning in bottle when it comes to this novel. The conceit is really, really good. What’s more, my storytelling ability is, at last, up to being able to tell the story in the way I want to tell it.

My fear is, I can actually pull this rabbit out of a hat when when I try to sell the novel, people will do their due diligence on me and not give me any credit for writing a really good piece of pop art. (As I keep saying, this novel has no literary aspirations — it’s not A Confederacy of Dunces.)

This is a question that has begun to eat away at me because it would be so unfair — and typical — if I actually do what I have set out to do and it’s not the novel it’s ME that prevents it from being bought. But if I have to self-publish, I will.

I just wish the work could get judged on its merits, not on what a conspicuous weirdo the author is.