Manuscript 3.0? Thoughts.
Update 13 30 Aug- 5 Sept
Well, last week I waxed on and on about working through feedback and rethinking my manuscript… again. Well, this week my co-worker was still out of work and I put in extra hours, and I had to do a painting commission. As such, there was almost no writing this week.
Gonna be a short blog… right? Maybe not.
The point of this weekly journal is to show the process, warts and all. And right now, it’s coming up all warts.
Feedback and Overthinking
So, last week my writing partner doubled down on their feedback, and it was a highly cathartic and excellent experience. He literally wrote me an essay defending every point in his feedback, complete with citations across several of my favorite (and not so favorite) novels.
And it was brilliant. Absolutely lovely as it hit my mind just right to help me pull my head out of my ass.
Now, there are over 70 entries in this blog series (if you include the first year) and I don’t expect that everyone has read them all. So, I might be repeating myself a little here, but bear with me.
My thesis novel for my Master’s degree is the prequel to this current novel. And I experimented with the pov in that book. I decided to try out a version of the GRRM method. In other words, I made each chapter have a singular pov and that pov was the only mind the reader was allowed to enter. Also, that character was the “camera.” All of the action, everything in the scene, was feed through the senses of that singular character. Now this led to many cool things, such as when the povs overlapped, and I’d show a scene from two different angles in different chapters.
This worked pretty well for the Thesis Novel. As the whole story was about five povs and how they were changed by their journey through a magical wasteland.
This Novel and PoV
But it kind of breaks down in the current novel. The current novel is really two stories happening at the same time. It is a narrative about two GROUPS of people that are running in parallel and cross over and then split again. I have been telling the GROUP story by alternating between two povs in each group.
To further complicate things I added in what I call “villain” povs. These had the effect of revealing what was happening as the heroes were still trying to get their shit together. I love allowing the reader to learn information that the “heroes” don’t know. Then the reader gets to be amused as the “heroes” guess or try to figure things out, or get the wrong information.
You get that moment where you go, “Uh oh, they don’t know about X and they aren’t ready for it.”
But there is a problem.
First, each group in the hero povs is about 6-7 characters. And when the action hits, telling it all through the eyes of only ONE of the characters gets muddled and confusing.
Second, by alternating between only two of the characters in each group, the book has a slow start. 1 chapter introing the pov of character A, 1 chap introing B, C, D, Villain 1… after we get 2 chapters we finally get the ball rolling for each group… but the novel is nearly 8 chapters deep and it feels like a really slow start.
Hence my above statement at the top of the page.
Getting my Head out of my Ass
If you look at the top of the page there is a picture of the outline of the last half of my novel… you’ll notice the color codes on the corners of the cards. I got so into the gimmick of patterning my chapters, I didn’t think about the flow. I didn’t take into account that the book is meant to have a main narrative (Group A) and a secondary narrative (Group B). And that the main narrative should be more than half the book (chapter and page count wise).
I spent so much time trying to make every third chapter a “Villain Pov” that they really are too much. Several of them were meant to be very short, 1000 words or less, but as I went on, they started to grow to 3000, 4000 words. Just way too much and forcing myself to alternate main povs has bloated and slowed the beginning of my story.
I spent the bulk of this week working on other things, but thinking about the novel. Asking myself if I wanted to do a 3.0 outline? I mean just three weeks ago I wrote an entire blog entry where I was so happy that I had outlined over 30 chapters to end the 2.0 manuscript. But now I’m rethinking.
Hard Choices
This is a very hard process.
I have never had feedback WHILE writing… hell I’ve barely had feedback after finishing the work. I have bad habits, and I’m aware of them, (most of them) but having someone point them out and talk about commercial viability of a story versus my “literary wank” is sobering.
I mean, I knew I didn’t need to start one of my groups at the end of the previous novel and tell the entirety of their voyage across the ocean back to where THIS story takes place. Oh yeah, there is some good writing in those chapters as I sum up the events of The Ashlands in a handful of chapters, and establish who these characters are (and also intro characters that show up in later novels).
So, what the hell do I do? I’m thinking I open a new notebook and start a fresh outline. Obviously, I can use a ton of this material. But I think I need to ditch the experimental pov and bring back the third omni. The conceit in the prologue for this novel (version 2 prologue) is that the entire story is being told by an unnamed Storyteller. Why not use that? I could turn my villain povs into epigrams at the beginning of chapters, and also vignettes between chapters. Breaks in Pov.
I can move my camera into a “hovering over the shoulder” third person view, instead of using the pov of just one character in the scene.
Eighteen Weeks
I started the first version of the story 18 weeks ago.
First week of May. I cranked out 9 chapters and realized that I had started wrong. Gutted my prologue (which was also WAY TOO clever). I reached 30,000 words and stopped in June.
June 14th I started the 2.0 version of the book. Jamming out 17 chapters and a new prologue and 75,000 words. And that petered out on Aug 23rd as I dealt with feedback and extra work.
What do I do?
I think I spend the week outlining a new version and we start fresh next week. The Fall really is my favorite time of the year, and I know that I can double down on getting out the words. Also, without all the extra bloat and bullshit I don’t need to aim a 3.0 manuscript at 200k, but more like 150k.
Outro
I know this isn’t a place to just stop my thoughts. But I have a lot on my mind.
I plan on spending the day outlining and getting something on paper, and then tomorrow (well today for those reading this as I’m writing this on Sunday) I will set up a new Scrivener project and see what I can work out as an outline (corkboard).
I thank you again for reading through my rambling thoughts. Incase you couldn’t guess I don’t think these out much before hand so much as I have an idea and run with it.
Again, I hope my missteps and corrections help some folks out.
Oh, in other news, several of the agents on my wish list are due to open their mail boxes this week. So, I will once again be sending out a barrage of query letters.
See you all next week.
