Close to the Broken Hearted: Making Progress, Killing Cats

I hit page eighty-nine of the new book today. I have until September to finish it, so, on the surface it would appear I’m in good shape. However, looking at my outline, I’m only on scene eight of forty so if things continue in this fashion I am going to be way over any sort of realistic word count. As it was, today I had to shuffle some things around because I was sort of still in the first act eighty pages in! Now I am finally officially out of Act I.

I say officially because, since it’s a mystery, there’s no true dividing line between Act I and Act II. There’s actually probably three or four different Act II entry points that sort of overlap each other. I did this on purpose so it wouldn’t be obvious to the reader what was going on (you’d have to know the story to understand, but it’s not an “A body turned up. Act I over. Enter Act II.” kind of book. It’s more “There’s something sneaky going on and I wonder who’s behind it? And several different events transpire that could signal potential suspects that lead us into the major action.” kind of book).

But so far, I’m happy with it. The writing is tight. It doesn’t have the nicely gift-wrapped shape that book one did, unfortunately. This story sort of sprawls a bit. The first book was a dream to write (thank God because I had to write most of it during and following a major separation with my ex-wife, and probably wouldn’t have been able to if the plot hadn’t been so cut and dried). Not that this one isn’t fun to write, it is. It’s just requiring more thought. Plus, I have to make sure everything jibes with book one which is taking more time than just pulling things out of my exterior bottom brain as I like to do.

Also, this book contains a lot of historical information about my mythological little town of Alvin, Alabama, and I’m trying to make it as factual as possible. So it’s requiring that nasty thing called research, which also slows me down. Mostly I’m writing at night and doing the rest by day. Sort of like Batman, if Batman were writing instead of punching out Gotham’s criminals all night, and looking things up on Wikipedia instead of running a billion dollar company throughout the day.

Actually, it’s nothing like Batman.

Something funny happened while writing today that I didn’t realize until after I’d written it. Blake Snyder has this great series of books called Save the Cat! which are on writing screenplays (but they also apply to novel writing… if you’re a writer, read ‘em, they’re fantastic!). The title is in reference to your hero needing to be shown to be a good person, and so to do this you should have a “save the cat” scene or something like it early on in your story.

Well, what’s funny is today I killed a cat. Actually, it was practically a kitten.

Right at the end of page eighty-nine. Splat! Cat dead. As soon as I did it, I looked up at my bookshelf, saw the Snyder books standing there, and started laughing. I guess I fail the Blake Snyder final exam, but I’m sorry, Snowflake the Cat had to die. It was crucial to the plot.

I won’t tell you how he dies. You’ll only hate me for it.

Anyway, that’s it. Just an update. More for my benefit than anyone else’s I guess. :)

Michael out.