Preemptive Retaliation

About half way through June, after my last depressing post, I took a half day off work and met Mike for lunch. We ate burgers and milkshakes and, page by page, he took me through my novel. He listed everything he liked, everything he didn’t, and shared his frustration when my characters made astounding leaps of logic. The manuscript was battered and annotated, most frequently with the comment “What?” which he would point at while shaking his head. As my plot became more convoluted and confusing, the tone of that What would become increasingly exasperated. He also pointed out what he enjoyed, and highlighted inconsistencies that ruined the enjoyment. Pointing a sweet-potato chip at me, he told me that I need to work on the plot. The plot needs to make sense.

And, for the second time, Mike has saved my book. I don’t think he really knows that. He’s  a decent friend.

So for the past month I’ve been writing in that little green notebook of mine, plotting. I decided to skip the first few chapters since I’ve already rewritten them a dozen times already. This time I started with the dead body. I started sketching out the scenes, hitting the story points, and eventually fleshing them out bit by bit to include more details, more thoughts. Now the book is riddled with post-its, scribbled over with almost incomprehensible writing. There are a few divergences, where I start fearing that the ending I wanted wouldn’t be possible, and then I had to come to grips with the fact that I had to change my ending, only for it to work out all right anyway.

And now the plotting is done. And it all makes sense.

Ooft.