I Just Wrote a Novel and You're Never Going to See It

Okay...

I just spent several months writing a ghost story, and it was a great experience for me. Here's what happened:

I started the story without the idea of making it scary--the ghost story was just intended to be a way to make the characters come together in a way that brought them back to their childhoods.

But as I wrote the story, it became obvious to me that the ghost story really needed more suspense than it had, so I started reading more horror novels to get some sense of how the pros build suspense. Then I went back and darkened the story significantly.

The end result, I think, was a much-improved story.

I then read "How Not to Write a Novel" (great book--highly recommended), and I identified several things I had done wrong. I won't list them here.

I went back and fixed those problems.

The story was even better as a result.

Then I sent out a passle of queries to agents and received the requisite form rejections, all the while reading a number of agent blogs and re-reading "How Not to Write a Novel."

I've stopped sending queries for this novel because I think I can do much better.

So now I'm working on a new novel.

Was it a waste of time? Absolutely not.

Did I give up too easily with my first novel? I don't think so.

Truth be told, the rejections were not crushing or heartbreaking, because even as I began sending them, I was beginning to see the flaws in the first novel.

Flaw #1: Married to the "Big Idea"

I had a great concept and expected it to carry the reader. But readers don't read novels for "big ideas." They read novels because the author has hooked them early on, created the necessary tension from the outset, and then played on that tension, augmented that tension, and twisted that tension until the reader simply can't put the book down.

Flaw #2: Way Too Linear

Most of my story built logically to one possible conclusion. And while the conclusion itself was cool, it's not realistic to expect a reader to plod through a few hundred pages towards a foregone conclusion, no matter how clever the plodding is.

Flaw #3: I Wimped Out

Since I didn't start out writing a scary book, I made the mistake of choosing a genre (supernatural fiction) which doesn't really scare me. To borrow from Ray Parker, Jr., "I ain't afraid of no ghost." And since ghosts don't scare me, the end result was not adequately frightening.

So, what scares me? Human cruelty scares me. Phooey on the dead and undead as far as I'm concerned: It's the living you need to worry about.

Flaw #4: My characters were too easily stereotyped

Now, I had written my characters with the intent of defying the stereotypes in interesting ways. Since you'll never see this novel, I can tell you: It's the homeless crackhead who ends up finding himself and saving the day.

But since the characters look like stock characters at the outset (even though they don't turn out to be that way by the end of the story), it just wasn't possible to get the reader on-board and take them on the journey.

So, as I said, I'm writing another novel, and I'm taking a radically diffferent approach.

New Approach #1: Microtension

It's a lot slower writing this way. Rather than envisioning a "cool scene" and sailing through it, I am now constantly racking my brains with the page-by-page action and torturing myself with the question: "Okay, that wasn't bad, but how can I raise the tension here? Not set up some 'big picture' future tension--but raise the tension in this scene, with these characters, at this moment?"

New Approach #2: Get a Little Twisty

I have a clear picture of how this story ends, but getting there is becoming a more interesting process fraught with hazards. As I increase the tension in each scene, other twists, turns, and dark notes keep presenting themselves. My characters keep getting darker and more complex, and the dangers they face seem to keep growing.

New Approach #3: Be Cruel to Be Kind

I've pushed myself into a dark corner--my opening chapter depicts an especially surreal and disturbing scene. Since this raises the bar in terms of where the story must now lead, I have not allowed myself the luxury of ending with a whimper. And since I am now writing about something that actually scares me instead of indulging in supernatural "what-ifs," I don't have the easy out of mere cleverness to get me through each scene.

New Approach #4: Characters without Labels

From a "type" perspective, the characters all exist in fairly similar circumstances. It is only their words, attitudes, and behaviors that differentiate them. There aren't easy short-cut labels that allow me the ease of falling into stock characterizations.