Sunday, May 3, 2015

Where does this fit?

I'm not sure where this novel fits.  It's a sexual thriller, with supernatural elements.  Not at all what I ever expected to write. I'm not sure what I've written. 

I don't think about where anything fits when I start a book.  I look more at whether a book wants to be written than whether I think it fits anywhere.  Much less whether it fits a popular category.  When I started writing my Vampire Evolution Trilogy, I was aware the Vampires were probably old news.

I had the opposite problem with Tuskers and The Last Fedora.  Not too many books written about pigs or Golems.

Anyway, this book is coming to me fast.  I've been writing way more than the normal words per day, and they've been good words.  The story feels right to me.

I was approaching the last 20% of the book yesterday when I realized I was probably going to come up short.  Not by much, and it was more than possible, even probable that in the writing it would happen or that a little going back and fleshing it out would get me there.  Almost all my stories could use a little fleshing out because I'm concentrating on getting the story down, not worrying about fluffing it.

Anyway, the real problem was, that though I had an ending in mind, getting the good guys and the bad guys in the same place at the same time, and though I had the little plot twist in the end that I always like to find (and which usually set up the possibility of a sequel) I didn't have the right mechanism for the confrontation.  That is, there was going to be a fight.  The main part of that was good.  It was going to be a fight for the affections of the men.  That was good.

But I also needed a physical way to put down the danger of the Succubi.  I don't know, knives and guns and such didn't seem very satisfying.

So I went back the core McGuffin:  The Blood of the Succubus.  How can I use that?

So I invented a new character, who enters with a chapter in the first third of the book, then again about halfway through the book, and then at the end.  (I actually have an idea for him to enter about two/thirds of the way through the book to make it consistent, but I'm not sure it is needed.  If my subconscious really wants it, it will come out.)

Anyway, this guy shows up at the end with the solution, the McGuffin.  Much more satisfying and thematically consistent.

Now the book is probably going to be bigger than it needs to be, but a book is what a book is.

Though I'm still wondering just what it is I just wrote. 

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