My Journey Writing 665
When I was 16 I had the rough idea for a new book: it was about a clone of the anti-Christ called 665, and the kicker was that he is a good guy. I didn’t know much else about what the story would eventually become other than that I wanted it to be a Great Tribulation story that is true to the Bible (the prophecies of Daniel and John).
So I put those ideas on the back burner until I finished up my first book, Hero of Archadeon — which can be found on Amazon, but not in an ebook format, unfortunately. :(
I tried writing a sequel to Hero of Archadeon, but I didn’t finish this project. I had some general ideas about what I wanted to do, but I lost my motivation part way through. (I don’t think I’ll ever try picking back up with that particular story arc ever again.) But then a couple months later something hit me: I felt God guiding me towards starting 665 when I was 21.
I was a bit surprised at first; I didn’t think I was ready to begin a project like it, considering that I was still a very new author. I did have one book under my belt, but I still didn’t have a lot of confidence in myself. I always thought that 665 would be my last book I’d ever write… I was wrong.
So, I did what any writer would do: I, while drunk, just started writing shit out. I say shit but I actually became enthralled recently after finding one of my old notebooks containing the original rough draft of 665. Mesmerized may actually be the correct word. I don’t know how to explain it, because it wasn’t exactly good, but I couldn’t quite look away.
But, anyways, I wrote out my first rough draft for 665 in about 7 or 8 months. I figured with a little bit of editing I’d have this one hashed out…
I was wrong: I literally ended up rewriting 665 around 10 times, maybe more, maybe less, over a five year period.
There was something I just couldn’t quite put my finger on, but the story just didn’t feel correct to me. It didn’t seem like it made sense in some areas, and I couldn’t quite make up my mind about certain things. One of the rough drafts was even around 400 pages. It had tons, and tons, of back story intertwined into it. Lots of strange, cool characters. And, lots of blood. It was a much more violent book. And one of the biggest things I changed, which I’m very glad for, was that I maintained the integrity of the narrator, Jessica.
Let me explain, Jessica is a devout Christian, therefore in the final version I wrote her in this fashion. I want Jessica to be a positive role model for young women, which I can’t honestly say that she was in the original rough drafts. She kinda let herself slip in some ways, and it cheapened the experience. It cheapened her relationship with Five, 665, the other main character.
And the other big thing I changed from my original rough drafts was that I made the primary focal point of the story Jessica. Before she was just this narrator who saw a bunch of cool things, and did some stuff; but in the current final version she IS the story, and she’s not coy about letting the readers know this either.
(She has an obsession with using the word ‘me.’ I promise this is done in a cute fashion.)
But doing this involved a lot of editing, and cutting out some cool shit. I use the word shit here because often cool shit doesn’t make sense, and if something doesn’t make sense in a story, then it’s most likely shit. Example: it would be cool if a million dollars suddenly appeared in front of me; but that wouldn’t make any sense, therefore, if this happened in a story, you might think, “Well that was shit. This story isn’t believable to me anymore.”
While the primary responsibility of maintaining the Suspension of Disbelief lies on the reader, the author has to make good efforts to support this as well. That’s why I chopped down a 400 page rough draft into a novella that’s only around 150 pages.
I saw several chapters that, while a lot of badass cool things happened in them, were superfluous, and the events that led to these chapters were primarily nonsensical. “Why would this one guy suddenly do a 180 and start helping the good guys. Why didn’t this person just do this instead of that? Why did the main bad guy, who’s apparently a genius, go along with that one person’s terrible plan? And why does the villain want to kill the hero again? Oh yeah! — no, wait, actually that doesn’t make sense either.”
If cutting out 250 pages of material means your book will make sense, then it’s worth doing.
The Most Difficult Cut:
There’s a character that’s very dear to me, Diego. He was created in the original rough draft of 665, but he didn’t make the cut.
He was supposed to be crucial; he was supposed to make a difference; he was supposed to be a character that would make an important sacrifice.
The biggest sacrifice I made for 665 was cutting Diego out of it. But here’s the thing, Diego is mentioned. Diego does still exist in this universe, only he’s not present during the time of this story.
I ended up falling in love with Diego so much that I started writing a younger version of him in the prequel book to 665, Champion of Archadeon, which is also a sequel to Hero of Archadeon. Diego is one of the main characters in that story, and he has a huge impact on the world that 665 takes place in. But I had to let him go, and that’s when I could finally finish 665.
The shackles were shattered, and I could finally continue my ascent up my Mount Everest. I never thought I could complete 665, I became so discouraged. I thought it was one of those things that I’d attempt until the day that I died. But I did it. Just a few months ago I finished a book I never thought I could, and I was actually happy when reading it.
665 is seriously my favorite fiction book ever written. I’m so in love with it. I’m in love with Jessica, frankly.
I need to keep writing, because if I don’t then the rest of Jessica’s stories won’t be told. I not only have ambition, but I have a purpose, a destiny to fulfill.
I can’t die yet: the rest of Jessica’s story needs to be told.
If you want to check out 665, you can find a link for it here:
https://www.amazon.com/665-Alpha-Omega-Dean-Briscoe-ebook/dp/B01E9D15RK?ie=UTF8&ref_=asap_bc
