Building towards Turning Points

As we get closer towards the end of the novel, I can’t give you much in terms of information – so I’ll focus on my reasons why I wrote the story like I did. I’m building towards turning points in these extracts, but I don’t want to tell you which, you’ll need to read the novel for that.

Footnotes and horrors

This specific extract is evil, as it practically changed how the manuscript worked out. I had to add so much more to the manuscript to this part, just from this one single footnote.

This specific extract is evil, as it practically changed how the manuscript worked out. I had to add so much more to the manuscript to this part, just from this one single footnote.

I had alluded to this idea in past drafts, but thought I should introduce the scene here in the first novel, where a lot of the world is being set up. This is so that if there are any future novels, then I can run with the idea. I loved writing this scene but I wanted to illustrate hundreds of other issues that this brought up. One of the main ones is that I needed to remember to pay this off.

Throughout the rest of these guides, I’ll try to show you where the implications of this footnote come into play. Some of these have a different font as I find that there are many benefits to changing the font throughout the editing process, as Gammond was not doing well for my eyes. Remember glasses wearers, clean them. Trust me, its important.

Back to the point at hand: the footnote. I wanted to show this footnote to you to illustrate why you need to plan your manuscripts better than I do, its pretty simple as to why – you might need to end up rewriting a lot of your work.

Additionally, these footnotes do two things: provide richness to the world and a bit of humor, but also flesh out the world. The characters – Erica and Nate specifically – have dashes of humor in their narrative voice, but the footnotes work to provide details they might not know/they miss. After all, unless I wanted Lucifer to be a character who merely relays information, this was the most important way to give extra information.

If you have read these guides up to this point you will know one thing is for sure – how much I love writing fight scenes, especially when they involve trained killers. You might be asking why I didn’t write a novel about trained killers if I love them so much as a concept. It wouldn’t have been very interesting as there are a few ways that these two can kill. I also wanted to make sure that this story wasn’t just about killing and the ramifications, but also wanted the contrast between classes and the idea of the ’self made person’ vs the person who ‘has it all’.

Humor plays quite a big part in this extract and I wanted to balance that with different types of humor – dark, comedic, absurdist *read the novel to find that scene out).

Tension, also, is something that I need to be great at creating and writers need to make something of themselves and find how they create their own brand of tension. Consider the visceral reactions and how you can use language to make tension. Maybe, like in this case, Erica needs to escape the jail. I want to create lots of tension and make you, the reader, ask the question: will she do it? Will she die or not? Your reader needs a point to turn the pages of your novels, give bits of information and then pay them off when it feels right. Newer writers, though, tend to struggle. I’ll write a post on this!

Running

There are some beautiful metaphors that I have peppered through the different chapters and I hope you’ll love them as much as I did when writing them. There is a weird idea that the world is suddenly made beautiful by writers and that from this beauty we come up with metaphors. Whilst this is true for some writers, most metaphors come from an idea being like something else or asking, ‘what does this symbolize to me or my characters?’ helps come up with these little nuggets of prose. Similarly, to what I was saying in the previous extract, this one is also one that I wanted to make evident tension was present. You as the reader need a reason to go to the next chapter and my job as a writer is to give you a reason to both and not put the novel down and go do the thousands of things you’ve got to do. I want to show this because of the description Ive decided to use – often the little specific things found in editing, going through each scene with a pen and saying ‘well what are they feeling?’ can help a lot.

Reformulating plans

Reformulating the sentences in this one to get the mood that I wanted was a pain in this extract. I wanted to illustrate my ability to change the mood of my work, even if the tone is remaining the same for the most part. The hardest part of the editing process for this is that a lot of the work I’ve done on the novel is getting across the hate, but I think I’ve fallen into the trap of using the word ‘blood’ too many times, but there is limited ways to do this. Her body, in this scene, is failing. Tension, as the reader, is that you’re confused and intentionally misdirected and confused. Blood giving strength is something I’ve given some light in previous breakdowns and scenes. The tricky part with this is showcasing the duality and change in identity for Erica herself. She is a mess, for many reasons, but her Demon striking is definitely one of them.

Ready to Kill

This scene is one of my favorites for lots and lots of reasons. One of these many reasons is that the start of the chapter and the wit I needed for this to work, which thanks to Derek Landy and my parents ‘witty’ humor, I’ve got a pretty good grasp on it (being raised by a European seems to have its advantages). If I added too much seriousness, you as the reader are already tense and wanting it know and I’ve got to give light diffusers to that tension along the way, keeping you in the air for too long will give some of you a panic attack, and for both of our wellbeing I don’t want to do that. Whilst I say that tension is diffused, I want to stress that there is a thousand ways to make tension and I, as a writer use so many of them interchangeably. I don’t want to turn this into a writing lesson, but ask yourself why are you feeling tense? If you want to write well, look at the building blocks, architects don’t construct buildings easily and they don’t do it without years of practice.

The writing here, takes a backseat to the spectacle of what exactly Lucifer is doing. As the footnote later tells you, he’s basically summoning a person to fight by his side, as he is outmatched by two against one. Even though on a toe-to-toe battle, Erica would wipe the floor with him in about 10 seconds if she was at full power. I can’t let her become that powerful, which is why the scene of the jail sequence was added, with the additional benefit of breaking them apart for a second and giving them separate development and cutting at the highest point to the other perspective.

Third Round

I want to end the post on this scene, because it’s the most significant one that I could have picked from this section of the novel, where the final battle between Lucifer and Erica/Nate really takes its focus. You as the reader have seen the failures and followed the plans failures and successes and you, as the reader, should know what is happening with this. The story question – will Nate get revenge and get what he wants? - in these next few chapters will be answered, as dictated by story structure. The first line I want to highlight, as Erica has quite a witty style, perfering to use violent language and humour to get her point across. One of these final battle type scenes started with some form of dialogue, but it is very difficult to format dialogue, so I changed it, and I think the scene benefited from it.