New directions…
I think I recently wrote on here about my problems with "the novel" as a concept, partially due to issues with my novel and trying to figure out how to resolve them. As is nearly always the case, the resolution always seems to lead to a lot of work.
I keep telling people that I’m not writing a novel at present; as most of my time is learning how to write a novel, and the text is just sort of the end result of that process. I’m in no rush to hurry up and put out a book, because I don’t think of it as a casual process. If I know of a single way to make this book better before it is published, that will be a bad thing.
The problem with the current draft of the book is that it is told in a very linear fashion. A happens, then B, then C, then D… and it just circles me to the dilemma of the protagonist. Why when we pick up a book do we accept that someone we don’t know just starts addressing us? Why when you open up page one and some dude says "Call Me Ishmael" are you just on board with the concept?
The issue seems to be that we need a reason for this to occur. In Fight Club, it starts with the narrator with a gun in his mouth, and then the rest of the book rewinds and says how it got to the point where Tyler Durden is pushing a gun into the narrator’s mouth. In essence, it starts at the end and then circles all the way back around to show how things got there. But it lays out the reason we are being told a story, by acknowleding the story as being told to us.
Same with a lot of books. In Interview with a Vampire, the whole pretense of the Interview is just to get around this. Otherwise, it would just be Monologue By a Vampire. So, I’m thinking that my novel needs to have a similar framing device.
The bonus of this would be that looking-back-and-telling-the-story angle would also let the character be more snarky. Basically, there are moments in my book where there is a bit of mean-spiritedness in his mindset, but then a lot of times, there isn’t, so the tone of the book kind of follows his mood. Switching and telling it all from some future perspective will even out the tone a lot more, since it will still be somewhat linear, but told from some other point in time.
The question now is what the framing device will be. In the short story, it is told in that looking-back manner, but doesn’t define why the reader is being addressed. So, once again, straying from the short story turns out to be a bad idea. If I’ve learned anything, it is that my instincts were good, I just shouldn’t have second-guessed them. Repeatedly.
So, the plan will be to continue the edit of the book as I have been, but start to shift the tone around as though it is being told from a future point-of-view, despite it not being defined as of yet what that framing device is. I see no point in pushing through with this linear draft just for the sake of finishing it, already knowing I’m going to change it.
