Hello my friends and the occasional relative!

Second October sale of ebook version of The Killer and The Dead starts later this week! Check it out!

I have begun to assemble my collage of pieces that will become The Red Palace this week. Why, because I wrote a section that ended with the single biggest shift in the book, when the focus both suddenly shifts, and tightens. That made me feel it was time to take stock of what I’d made so far.

I have put everything into an approximate chronological order, and have begun working through it, noting passages that need to move, marking info dumps and unneeded exposition to cut(which I wrote as reminders to myself here and there), highlighting areas that need to be brought into compliance with each other, and basic continuity issues.

There is a lot of work to be done to properly integrate everything and find the optimal configuration, but it is genuinely exciting, and I am seeing and writing extra mini-sections even in my word doc notes. I am identifying lies , character motivations and why they say what they say at any given time and to what purpose. I’m trying to make sure everything said has an intention behind it, even if that intention or goal is rapidly undone by events or counter offers. This is not easy for me.

I’m keeping track of where the reader first learns X, Y, Z details, and judging if that is too soon or late. (It is really too soon for me to judge this accurately, these are placeholders for later revision as the story is more fully fleshed out.) I’m seeing where foreshadowing is planted and assessing if it is too much or just enough.

This process is giving me a sense of how long the final version will be. It is novella to novel length. Depending on how much setting detail I add, basically. It could easily be padded to novel length, but I’m not interested in doing that if it detracts from the thrust of the story.

I have found, in the re-read, that I really like the absence of attributed speech. (I know, it’s my inner arrrtisstah asshole coming out to play, but bear with me for now!) The parts where attribution is present seem so clunky to me, filled with tell tell telling in any attribution related color phrases. No attribution just feels so much cleaner to me. But I know who is talking – would a reader? I don’t know, (doubt it right now) I’ll have to wait for future feedback on that. I do have increased confidence in the voices of each character, their individual sound. It isn’t perfect by a long chalk, but two of my four main speakers have a very strong identity, close to three, which leaves the fourth as ‘the other one’, which can be built up, and actually kind of works, I think.

This feels like a really cool and creative way to approach the book. I couldn’t take it on in my usual linear fashion, it seemed too much, so I wrote the bits that spoke to me first, and then pieces that needed to be put in that I was interested in, and now, in arranging those scenes together, the sections in between are being suggested to me automatically, AND their specific needed content: both the topics to be covered and the character interaction and development  required. It really is creating the book organically.

That, ladies and germs, was a sandwich paragraph. (I just made the term up. Goes to internet – oh look, it already exists. Hey ho. Nothing new under the sun. I just meant two short sentences at start and finish with a fat endless sentence in between, just for fun, the extra pastrami, as it were.)

So, if you are ever stuck, or overwhelmed by a writing project, start writing it out of order according to your own interest and whim. This has also been previously advised. Three links there, not just one. Nothing new under the sun again – nothing new but your take on it. So do it anyway! Write key moments, or introductions, then pull it all together. I was afraid of the level of complexity required in this conversation, how to manage character development moments within the advancement of plot objectives and biographic reveals. Now that I have this somewhat random framework to start with, what is needed and what is necessary is developing before me. My outline, lounging in the corner smoking a cigarette and thinking in French, nods approval. It can accommodate all this. How lucky is that?

Have a great week, my friends. The days are linear, not all your activities have to be. Fascinating.