The Making of “Headshot”

-The Inspiration

 

     Anyone else out there have a problem with just setting things aside unfinished?

Those of you who do will understand why I had to write this book.

I’ll back up and start again at the beginning.

December 2011. Two teenage dudes are chatting on the phone. Dude #1 (that’s me–I’m always #1) was told Dude #2 wanted to make an action movie. Being of the born-for-drama type, Dude #1 is of course intrigued by the idea. Curious, he asks Dude #2 what the story of said action movie would be.

Dude #2 provides brief, vague answers about the plot…something about a dead girl in the woods and some assassins.

Despite being enthusiastic about filming a murder story, Dude #1 is confused by the lack of details. Why is the girl dead? Why is she found in the woods? Who specifically killed her? Why? What did she do? Who are these ‘assassins’? Why do they exist? What is their goal? Are they a full-blown organization or simply a small group of killers? Why didn’t they better dispose of the body?

Dude #2 has no answers.

Bruh.

Being, as you know, of the born-for-drama type, and seeing the plight of his comrade’s film plot, Dude #1 takes it upon himself to begin filling in the blanks. The assassins will now be an organization of hitmen. The dead girl will now be the victim of knowing too much about these killers. And in the midst of it all will be three teenage boys, caught at the scene of crime. On the run, the boys will take on a daring quest for the truth despite great danger to themselves.

At least, that was the general idea.

Picture it: weeks later, six friends, all in their early-mid teens, are hanging out on the rockiest property Gainesville has to offer. The teens are split into two equal groups of three boys and three girls each. With cheap camcorder in hand, they set off to film this epic no-budget, no-script, no-plan movie.

They get three scenes in. They call it a day.

To be fair, it was a decent try. We even got into doing some makeup on the ‘corpse’ (one of our friends, who loved laying in dirt for an hour with white and red paste caked on her face). But the point is, the film was never finished.

It was around this time in life that I was beginning to understand that a ‘good try’ amounts to nothing without a finished work to show for your efforts. Growing up with an energetic older sister who jumped from project to project, I’d gotten used to leaving the things we collaborated on in the dust days, hours or sometimes minutes after starting them.

And that was and is completely fine, if your goal is to have fun. My sister is a fun person. She initiates fun group activities like you wouldn’t believe. Fun is kinda her thing. Making movies, for her, had always been a way to initiate something fun with friends, so regardless of whether we finished the project or not, it was a success in her eyes. Being the younger brother, I’d always gone along with that because, again, it was fun. But I’d also noticed I tended to take the projects more seriously than my sister and the rest of the group.

I had written scripts for our movies before, as I’d noticed how our movies turned out silly because they were completely unscripted. Not to say my scripts weren’t silly, but they generally at least had a beginning, middle and end. That was because, the minute someone mentioned a story idea to me, my mind raced ahead with ideas for what it could be.

This was the first time I started to wonder about what that meant, though. Why did I think that way? Why did I get this burst of creative energy every time someone so much as hinted at a story idea? I’d never taken it seriously. But after that attempt at a movie, I started to wonder. I started to consider, too, why all these unfinished projects bugged me.

About two years later, my family left our home state to move across country. The first year in our new home, I really missed GA. The Southern accents (still miss that), the redneck logic, the colorful local history, the deep roots my extended family had put down there…it had always meant something to me. That, and we had left behind our friends’ family. They were planning on moving up after us, of course, but there was a whole year before that actually happened.

At one point during that year, I got a bit nostalgic. I went through our old home-made movies, one being our unfinished ‘action movie’. Then, boom. Once again, I was struck by the potential the story had. Despite all the cheesy acting, the plot problems, the lame makeup and the lack of a middle and ending, I liked the idea, and I wanted to see it through.

 

-The Writing Process

 

So I whipped out the ol’ notebook and started putting together an outline for a manuscript titled ‘Headshot’. I sketched out the key plot points, put them all in order, and then, within days, I was sitting on my laptop, writing. Within another month or so, the first rough draft was finished. I showed it to my sister, who promptly teared up at a certain scene. I thought “ok. wasn’t expecting that. Maybe this story really does have potential.”

And that was the horrible (I mean, first) draft. 35k words. All present-tense. Mostly action and dialogue. It was so close to being considered a novel, it was a little nauseating. But I couldn’t think of anything more to add to it. So I edited it as best I could, sent it off to a writing contest, and got a reply not long after. I didn’t win the contest, but the judges were fond of the manuscript, giving me high marks on the dialogue, characters, narration and the exploration of point of view.

I took these marks as a big success even though I didn’t win. Then, it now being summer of 2015, I set Headshot aside. I felt it was still missing something, but I didn’t know what, even after getting feedback from several friends and family members. I had another project going at the time that I was ready to give some attention to , and since Headshot was now ‘finished’, I felt justified in moving on.

For the bulk of the year, I focused on my other project–co-directing, writing for, choreographing and acting in a short action film. Near the end of 2015, after the short film was released to the whimsical world of Youtube, I was inspired for another fiction story that I began pouring Hamiltonian amounts of time and energy into.

Headshot was left behind for the whole of 2016, with me periodically opening the document and looking over the manuscript, curious about what it needed. Mostly, though, I was thinking about it as a whole–where I’d done right, where I could do better. I was growing as a writer at the time, so some ideas were starting to brew under the surface.

Another year later, my other project’s horrible (first) draft–a full-length fantasy novel–was finished, and once again I felt like a free man, enjoying a needed break.

Early 2017, my younger sister and I were both eagerly looking forward to the release of an anime movie called Koe No Katachi (A Silent Voice). We had both enjoyed seeing the art from it, and since I’m always on the prowl for intriguing and/or inspiring art, I was starting to look for clips from the movie on Youtube. Instead, I found a music video someone had put together, basically summing up the film.

And instantly, a light bulb moment.

The idea of a cute high-school romance combined with feelsy music was what triggered my sudden revelation about what was missing from Headshot.

One of my biggest pet peeves about fiction is when authors kill off characters with the intention of producing ‘feels’, without actually doing the work of developing said characters. But that was exactly what I’d done with Headshot. The horrible (first) draft had all the elements I wanted–humor, peril, hope, despair, sadness–but there was still something missing.

Sure, I put a lot of work into having the main character, Nate, struggle with his own grief, but I had left out something crucial: the audience. Yeah, maybe we as readers (as an author, I consider myself a reader of my own books, as well) could have seen that Nate was struggling, and we had a grasp of what caused his grief…but we didn’t feel it, because we didn’t know Janis, or what her relationship with Nate really looked like, or even how they met. We didn’t know what Janis meant to Nate, because we hadn’t seen them together.

I started furiously writing out new ideas. Scenarios I never would’ve thought up without inspiration came to mind, and I tapped them out on my laptop keyboard. I felt like a detective, digging for details on Nate and Janis’ relationship, and the more I discovered, the more I felt sad about Janis’ death, myself. Because now I was enjoying seeing her with Nate, and I wanted them both to be happy. Crazy how paternal you can feel about imaginary people, but it’s true.

Flash forward a few months. The newest draft of Headshot is finished. Roughly 62k words, exceeding minimum novel length by 22k.

 

-The Pre-Publishing Process

 

I started looking for a proofreader. I’d never hired anyone before, but I liked the idea of finding someone through Upwork.com. I spent the extra money to attract more skilled proofreaders, then pored over the many proposals that flooded in. Sure, there were still some people who said things like ‘yes i great proofreader plz hire me plz’, had no listed experience, references, etc., and those were instantly disqualified.

But then there was Jake. Sterling background, perfect success rate, lots of experience, an impressive portfolio, and plenty of great reviews. Basically, he’s the Crest toothpaste commercial guy of Upwork’s proofreaders. Though I’ve never met him in person, I’m pretty sure when he grins, his teeth sparkle and there’s a faint yet heavenly dinging sound in the distance.

Anyway, he was exactly what I was looking for in a proofreader–someone with proven skill who I could easily communicate with. He was also very blunt, to the point that his critiques on my manuscript left me laughing out loud at the points he made. A whole host of tiny problems with Headshot were fixed because of him, making the story way more cohesive and plausible. When it comes to making a story realistic, the devil’s in the details, and Jake was really good with those.

Because I stepped out and did something I’d never done before, my book was now spotless, and the rest was in my hands. Since I had long-since chosen to self-publish through Amazon’s Createspace, I still had to format the book, get an ISBN, purchase a title font, and most importantly, put together a cover design.

My plan had been to use 99designs.com to find someone to design my cover the way I wanted it, but due to the costliness of that ($800+, a price I was willing to pay for a good enough cover), my family advised me to let a friend take a whack at it.

I was hesitant to do that. Oh boy. ‘Uh, yeah, I got my friend to do my cover for me. Durhur.’ Can you scream ‘self-published author’ any louder? I thought. Though my friend has mad computer design skillz, I hadn’t seen him do anything as specific as a book cover before–plus, I had my own lack of knowledge to deal with, so I had been aiming to connect with a pro. I didn’t want to spend time going back and forth with my friend on a cover that was just so-so because we didn’t have a clue what we were doing. I wanted to know that I was going to get a quality design for the book I’d spent so much time and energy on. Perfectly reasonable, but I decided to put away those doubts and at least give my friend a shot.

For those of you who don’t know my friend, allow me to give you a brief intro. I’ll call him Jojo–not because that’s his name (it’s Josiah), but because it’s funny, and I call him that all the time.

Jojo is a funny guy. He’s also crazy talented. He once designed a functioning mini-game revolving around shooting waves of mannequins falling from the sky in a few short hours, all while pre-production for a short film was going on around him. Pre-production isn’t his favorite thing, but get him on set or in post-production and he’s a wizard. 3D modeling? Rotoscoping? VFX? But of course. Need foley or any other kind of audio? No prob! Lighting advice? He’s on it. Choreography input? Sure thing! Need a shot of a character driving a car? Heck yes! He’ll willingly strap himself to the front of the car, camera rig in his hands, and ride down the road on the edge of a trailer. Don’t have time to set up a jib and need him to sit on your shoulders to film a specific shot? Lol wut? Sure.

You get the idea. Jojo’s a cool dude. Capable and reliable. So when I asked if he’d try putting together a cover design for me, I wasn’t surprised when he was more than willing to take a stab at it. I gave him specific instructions about what I was looking for in terms of color, style, image, positioning, etc., then let him loose. Within about three hours, he’d done something I had not expected: he’d made a design I liked even better than what I’d envisioned.  My first response was an out loud ‘whoa.’

I had been looking for a minimal yet eye-catching cover, lots of red, black and white. I’d also wanted texture, but had been expecting something tacky-looking to meet me when I asked for that. Instead, I got all of the things I’d asked for in a way I hadn’t expected. The texture looked perfect. I never even bothered having him try a different color because the first was exactly what I was hoping for (and here’s the funny part: Jojo is colorblind. Red is hard for him to distinguish from other colors).

And my favorite part? The bullet centerpiece. This will sound goofy, but I’d originally imagined an image of a real, brass bullet on the cover, but Jojo did something much better and more in-line with the rest of my vision–he made the bullet a silhouette with a gleam and a shadow.  And for bonus points, he found and modified the perfect font to use for the title.

I was very excited. Not much surprises me, but Jojo’s work did, because it had exceeded my expectations, and even though we spent a week or two talking over countless tiny changes and edits, it was all a fun process (coming from the person who wasn’t doing the work). I enjoyed going back and forth, troubleshooting and figuring out dimensions, bleed margins, trim sizes, and all the other little details involved.

Before the job was even done, Jojo told me to forget about the money I’d set aside to pay him with. By the time this post is published, I’ll have tried again to tell him to shut up and take my money, so whether he does that or not will have to remain a mystery to you. Mwahaha.

 

-Building the Website

 

All that was left after having acquired my ISBN, formatting my book, finishing the cover, numbering all its pages, etc., was building this site, then I would be able to hit the ‘publish’ button. That makes it sound like building a site isn’t a lot of work, but that’s not true at all. I just have plenty of help. A few days prior to my self-set publishing deadline (cutting it close, I know), I got together with two of my friends who are savvy with WordPress and site hosting. They helped me get set up to where I could start playing with themes and site design on my own. I went home, sketched out my layout idea, then got moving on writing site content.

The next day, I visited another friend, Michelle. She’s a master of branding, site design and self-marketing. I sat down at her table and had her throw information at me so that I knew what my next specific steps were. By the time I left, I felt way more encouraged not just about my site, but about publishing in general. Encouraging people is Michelle’s thing, and she does it well.

Now it was all up to me. I started working on my site’s theme and design, getting it to look roughly like I wanted. There were still some things that I couldn’t do on my own, namely, the header. Again I turned to my tech savvy friends, who were able to get me started, then had Jojo design the header logo for me. From there, all that was left were a few tweaks which we took care of within a few hours.

From there, all that was left was going to Createspace and hitting ‘Publish’. The final step.

 

-Hitting ‘Publish’

 

I stood paralyzed, my finger hovering over my laptop’s touch pad. Could I really do this? Could I really publish a book? Could I open myself to the world and the Pandora’s Box of criticisms and death threats therein? Could I subject myself to the ridicule of society? What if my book was really horrible–what if it was hated? What if–

Just kidding. None of that actually happened. I’ve never clicked a button so fast in my life. I’ve been like a pregnant woman for the last year, feeling like I’ve been lugging this monstrously overdue baby around. It’s high time it saw the light of day. Will this kid be the kind of kid that gets teased and bullied out in the world? Will it be the kid that walks around, feeling invisible to everyone? Or will it grow into a well-known and respected youth?

Psh, I dunno. I’m just over here, distracted, trying to imagine my book as a human being that fits my own metaphors. But regardless, it all comes down to me now–me, and the village of people who’ve helped me get this far.

Next stop: Marketing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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