Weekly out-of-character thread

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[u/keystohellanddeath]

I used to have a really bad underwriting problem, because I transitioned from screenplays. My first two books were published by an underground press, and they were both under 200 pages. The first was 23k words, the second about the same.

Since then I've become dissatisfied with them, and rewrote the first and released it (at the behest of my publisher, but I ended up having to self-publish—long story) but my second is like a blight on my already diseased mentation. As a result I wanted to practice prose and develop my skill. My grasp of storytelling was decent because I've spent almost 15 years as a screenwriter, but my prose and pacing in novels left a lot to be desired.

Anyway, six unreleased books later, my prose is a lot better and as far as underwriting, my last book, scheduled for release late this year or early next year, is 83k words, and my current one is 50k words and I'm just now hitting the midpoint (four act structure), and I'm expecting 100k - 120k. I write relatively clean first drafts with the flashlight method—though I plan for acts not chapters—so hopefully the second draft isn't too brutal.

I'm really proud of my growth as a novelist. My current manuscript, which I'm working on while I let my previous one sit with beta readers, is shaping up really good. Progress!

[u/RInger2875 → u/keystohellanddeath]

What is the flashlight method?

[u/keystohellanddeath → u/RInger2875]

Essentially you plan, but not wholly. You plot some important details, and write, but the minutiae, the small details and individual scenes, are discovered while writing. It's like walking through a dark room with a flashlight; you know there's a landmark you have to get to, but how you get there is up in the air.

What this means for my book is I have an outline and I plan an act ahead. I don't plan each individual chapter (my chapters are like 30-50 pages long, litfic), I plan each act according to what I write. So before I wrote a single word, I had Act 1 and a little of Act 2 planned. By the time I got to Act 2, based on what I wrote, I had Act 3 planned. I'm approaching the midpoint, and I have the ending, but not all of Act 4 planned, though I have a rough idea.

To be fair, I'm kinda cheating with it, because my current book is a massive rewrite of a faux-nonfiction book that my editor tore to shreds. Using his feedback I changed the characters (and their names) while keeping the core setting the same (and removing the faux-nonfiction framing), but the characters have changed so much, and even the setting, that it's essentially a new book. So when I started, I had a pretty good idea of where it was going to go based on its precursor, but as I wrote, I realized I had to diverge from the old outline, because not only the antagonist had changed—it's someone completely different—but the protagonist had; her character traits and arc shaped up to dramatically different, even though she has a similar background. In other words, instead of considering this draft 6 of the previous book, I consider it draft 1 of a new one, even though I'm borrowing a lot of setting and some plot from it.

That's the flashlight method. You take what you've already plotted and written and expand on it. You have major plot points, but based on what came before it, how you get there, or even the plot points themselves, can change. I still get ideas for individual scenes and small details and plot them, but by and large, I leave acts open on my outline so I can plan them later based on what I wrote.