On The Pains of Writing My First Novel

Photo by Artsy Vibes on Unsplash

It was the 9th of April of this year when I decided to start my endeavor to write my debut novel, Temptations. The concept and many of the characters however, had been laid out within the character-centered Monk and the Devil, which sought to expand of their characters and provide a background for me to work from in creating the full-length novel. This prelude was begun in February of this year, and was completed at 21K words. I had intended to write the entire first draft within a month, in order to prepare myself to compete in this year’s NaNoWriMo and gain some more experience with publishing a full-feature novel to market. I had intended on it being at least 50K words (the official length of a novel to be accepted for submission), and hoped to average at least 2K words a day, in order to not only break the word count requirement, but to also have enough time to go through the entire novel and edit to perfection, releasing with the intentions of being recognized as an author, and expanding on many of ideas I introduced both my blog posts and my essays.

Almost three months later, and my debut novel now sits at 80K words, completely divorced from how I had intended for it to pan out. The original concept was for a tragedy focused around the interactions between several key characters, featuring a general overview of the world they are placed in, as well as some dialogue between each characters as several philosophical themes were examined and highlighted throughout. Sadly, I’ve had to make several changes to the overall structure of the book: for instance, I removed an original seven-day format and went with a act-based progression throughout the story, designated as such: rising (I), ascending (II), confrontation (III), atonement (IV), and reflection (V). The story was meant to take place in a similar setting to Cocytus in Dante’s Inferno, and be spread through the seven layers of Hell as is depicted in the book, although I had to haphazardly change the setting to most having taken place between two layers of Hell, and a poor attempt at explaining how they connect together, and their purpose in the story. The plot of the story has become a garbled mess; although the main plot of the story is the Monk’s journey through Hell as he attempts to discover who he is and why he has found himself in this predicament, I attempted to interweave the antihero, the Devil’s story, alongside him, as I went for contrasting perspectives when it came to what had been presented.

This largely has to do with how I introduced both the Monk and the Devil in the novella of the same name; when focusing in on the Monk, I wanted to make a statement on work culture, and the negative aspects of modern society; however, this somehow translated into the Monk being bludgeoned and thrown down to Cocytus after witnessing his coworker, Paul, violently beating a man to death. Before hand, I had tried to introduce the conflict of homeless crowding the building where the Monk worked, and tried to build as a source for the Monk’s change in morality, but then I foolishly added in the presence of a demon (proverbially speaking, a figment of his imagination) that sought to make his life a living Hell. This same Demon was introduced throughout the entirety of the story within the Subconscious Mind of the Monk, as he routinely attacked the Monk and tried to kill him at many times.

This odd background only clashed further as the Monk was eventually confronted by a group of soldiers armed with guns and armor (think of paramilitary), taking after an awful rendition of a Call of Duty game, in addition to military-styled elements introduced into the plot later on, as the Devil was ordered to the kill the Monk for knowing too much about the state of Hell and for trespassing without being a resident. This odd clash of an Enlightenment style setting coupled with a modern working background and modern warfare tactics only served to generally confuse the direction of the plot, and distance it from how I had originally intended for it to play out.

The primary reason for such a failure to keep the plot consistent within my vision is that, for the most part, I failed to plan ahead for the development of each character, and the general structure of the story. I pantsed through the entire story, only going back as needed to fix blatantly obvious errors or changes within the story. I’ve written the entirety of the story so far without even taking a moment to figure out how each character should act throughout the plot. Even though I didn’t expect the main story to end up perfect the first time through, I abandoned my usual habit of editing the story as I went along in favor of reaching a certain word count, and even reiterating the story several times over in order to iron any issues with plot structure, characterization, and other issues that were sure to appear.

As such, the novel took a completely wrong turn somewhere around the very beginning, where the Monk initially wakes up, and at the point where he meets the Phantom (a key character in both sides of the story). If you were to read the novel, you would notice that a lot of the characters act out of their defined roles, and some of them are shown to be explained through horrible dialogue. In fact, I had to completely delete 5560 words due to how shoddy the writing was, and how amateurish it was when it came to expanding upon the relationship between the Monk and the Phantom. The next few days after that day, April 26th, were marred in editing and revision, forcing me to play catch-up with all of my writing, and being the sole reason as to why I didn’t hit the 50K word requirement in time. To put the matter succinctly, a slight deviation from my vision culminated in me vying off the intended course for the novel and having the end result be completely different from what I had imagined.

It could also be argued that the entire concept was flawed from the initial premise, and that the tragedy could have been set in a different time period, or with all supernatural and mystic elements removed, or with more of a focus on human relationships and the Monk’s journey on Earth, rather than in Hell. I also should have left any hinting at capitalism, or what the Monk did for a living to be explained within the story as a reaction to a conflict introduced, to where it would serve as the root of his future growth. The Devil, on the other hand, had been set up to be a morally conflicted antihero, although I imagine that his backstory with his marital problems and other such confrontation with the police could be rewritten to be more realistic and thus more grounded in the more human elements of isolation and despair. The original rendition of the book was not meant to highlight any such heroes, or to paint anyone in a favorable light, as they were all horribly flawed and without any real advantages that made them universally desirable.

Another thing that could’ve been done at the very beginning was to avoid the concept of a character-based arc at the beginning, and simply start with the Monk waking up with no memories as to who he was, and simply begin the story from there. Expanding on his amnesia, it could also be argued that I jumped the gun too early in giving back his memories, as I failed to introduce them in a coherent manner, and simply released them upon them after a confrontation with the demon that had been chasing him. It came within an insight, when the better choice would have been to gradually have him recover his memories, as his character was developed through dialogue with himself.

In all, Temptations was an example of poor planning, combined with an arrogant and haughty belief that I could write an entire first draft without any planning ahead, all while trying to implement fanciful ideas that had no merit, but were done purely to satisfy an arbitrary word count. Although I still plan on participating in this year’s NaNoWriMo, several things to need to be done in advance to ensure that this same nightmare and amount of wasted time does not happen again:

1. All characters and their role within the plot should be fairly detailed in advance, allowing for some changes later on within the story, especially with the presence of new ideas.
2. The plot should be concise and easy to mold, but strict enough to remain coherent throughout the story, and without any significant changes to any other element of the novel.
3. The book needs to be more concise; no more than 60K words should be employed in order to explain the entirety of the novel, and needless details should be removed or excluded outright.
4. Themes and how they will be explained should be defined along with the plot, and characters should be used to define the theme in relation to their actions and motives.
5. At least three to four days should be held in advance for editing and revision, as the novel is to be immediately published at the end of the month, or at the beginning of the next month. However, the minimum word count for each day should be reached without fail, even if more time is to be allotted.
6. Time should be taken at the end of each session (120 minutes, so about 10 to 15 minutes) to manually scan through the whole story at that point in time and change any details if necessary.

So, after all of this analysis as to why Temptations failed, the big question remains:

What can be done to salvage Temptations, and is it possible to publish it and see it to completion?

To best answer this question, I’ve decided to come up with a plan on how to save this novel and ensure that the final product comes to fruition for publishing and formatting. The plan, which is still subject to alteration, goes as such:

Step 1: Work on a new detailed outline for the novel that goes into detail about the individual acts, each character and their relation to the plot, and how the plot will progress throughout.

Step 2: Read through the entire novel and make notes as to certain elements of the story to keep in accordance to the plot, whilst also highlighting what to keep.

Step 3: After completing Steps 1 and 2, begin to rewrite the novel by adding in new material and including excerpts from the past first draft. Aim for a word count of 1000 to 1500 words a day, with a 15 min. check at the end of each session to ensure that the plot remains consistent.

Step 4: With the first draft of the novel kept to under 55,000 words or so, undergo a three-day revision process by refining the book and chiseling away anything that interferes with the quality of the book.

Step 5: Make any final changes to the novel, and prepare to have it formatted and published to Amazon and other retailers.

This is only a basic plan for now, and I hope to truly do some soul-searching and finish the final draft of this book by the end of this Month, with the intention of publishing it immediately at the beginning of August. Hopefully, with a lot of time spent on the initial outline, most of the issues that plagued my first time through should be avoided. I’m also going to make a lot of changes to the vision of the novel that allow it to present itself in a clearer manner than I how I originally wrote it. I’ll be sure to post updates to the blog as necessary.