The one thing that is making this novel inherently difficult is that I'm changing the entire tone/structure of the novel. When I had originally written this thing back in 2011, it was chock full of the triad of bad violence: physical, sexual and mental. It was also chock full of bad writing in general. Its only saving grace was that it had a decent two plot set up, so obviously that was the only thing worth hanging onto.
The two plots, such as they were and as best as I can figure out are this:
1} Plot 1: Large drug kingpin wants to take out a smaller rival so that he can become larger. An underling to the smaller rival gets bent and sexually assaulted (multiple times) by his boss's wife/girlfriend. Hilarity, hi-jinks and all kinds of mayhem take place after underling becomes babysitter to his boss's SO. Ending is tragically sad as things go kablooie.
Please note that a healthy dose of sarcasm/contempt was inserted into that paragraph.
2} Plot 2: A wake for the deceased underling (this is revealed near the end), in which hilarity, hi-jinks and all kind of angry people get involved, and the late underling's boss gets it in the end.
Please note that you should wash, rinse and repeat with the previous note.
There lies the rub. Instead of redoing it and keeping that triad of violence somewhat intact, I decided to make the story do a handstand and make the characters a little more sympathetic, as well as emphatic to each other. I still kept the majority of the key scenes in the story (e.g. the party at the condo, the aftermath of the party, a home invasion and the club) but I made them a little more based in the reality of the type of business they're in and a few of the real consequences of their actions, as opposed to the over-the-top cartoonish consequences previously.
I also flipped the main plot idea as well, so instead of having the underling killed off on purpose he gets killed by accident/double cross. Also, the large kingpin doesn't want to actually kill two of the main characters but wants them to take over his business as a partnership with another member of his organization. Sounds complex I know, but I'm making the best of a bad situation.
As for plot two, I'm basically keeping that one completely intact. The only change being made is that I'm filling out each scene so they become more satisfying and tasting greater. The ultimate goal is merge it with plot one so that there's a satisfactory conclusion to everything.
Finally, this story will the first where about half will be handwritten before being transcribe to the computer. Call me old-fashioned, but I would rather do my thinking while staring at a blank piece of paper and studying what was previously written, instead of staring blankly at my computer screen and eventually getting distracted.
Oh and my prediction of what I actually generated on the computer versus what I wrote out was spot on. I hand printed about eighteen and three quarter pages of text, which transcribed out to about nine and a half pages of text, totaling 4,700k+ words. This took me roughly two weeks or so to write out, spending approximately three total hours per day while doing so.
What is old is sometimes new, so long as you can clearly and accurately read your new. Otherwise you can call it a day and just become a professional with very bad handwriting.
Tune in next week when I try to elaborate a bit further on both plots and hopefully have something else to talk about as well.
And the picture? It's a closed side road that back when I was a lad actually emptied into the man road that runs through the town. It kind of represents the chaotic mess that this novel original was.
{c} 2022 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved
"Average American Novel," LOL! Sounds promising so far! Make the Boss's wife a dominatrix.
ReplyDeleteActually, I'm at the part of the story where they're inside a BDSM club trying to capture each others, as unbeknownst to each other, they have to capture each other to erase a drug debt. It's a bit complicated, but yeah.
DeleteThat does sound like a lot of work, but I dumped almost all of story before and redid it. Keeping some elements will mean a lot of writing. Have a lot of pens handy!
ReplyDeleteMost definitely. There are a lot elements that actually do work, but they all need to be approached from a different angle. Have dropped a few though, but yeah, lots of pen and so far have collectively written about 26 pages so far.
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