What I Assume

Today I was writing the character sketch of the last primary character in the novel I’m trying hard to finish, and found myself quoting word-for-word what is probably the most famous line in any Star Trek film:

The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.

I include this trivia to evidence the fact that it’s hard to write anything without what Harold Bloom calls the anxiety of influence playing a role. For instance, nearly every time I reflect of the storyline of the early stages of my novel I say something like a little prayer: “Please let this not be like Harry Potter”, even though the two have absolutely nothing in common. Indeed, the sentiment is as much about my distaste (not, however, disrespect) for Rowling’s writing as it is about fears of attribution and appropriation. But even Rowling’s Potter series is based on everything from Star Wars to The Lord of the Rings to (perhaps most obnoxiously) Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game.

Cognizant of this, I’ve decided that rather than ignore the similarities between my effort and the successful efforts of others, I need to recognize them and focus on how mine is different, or on how my telling of (parts of) the same story needs to be told in it’s own particular way. One should only write the books that can’t not be written, and so all scrutiny to similarities should be acknowledged and considered.

Nearly a year ago, at a peak of mental anxiety, I decided to cease flitting around and write an ambitious novel based on a 10-minute dream. Let me be completely candid and communicate the importance of this particular challenge: while my love of the art of good fiction contributed to my desire, the critical motivation to embark on this challenge was far more personal, centering on nightmares of high school reunions (which I won’t attend) and the fear of mortal obliteration.

I started on this project in the early autumn of 2007, and have been working on it with good regularity in the mornings before work, trudging through outlines, character sketches, chapters, and half-chapters.

But as this summer rolled in I knew I was far behind my own expectations. I was revising chapter after chapter of the first third of the novel incessantly. I knew there was something wrong.

Being an English grad and a lover of literature, I have a comfortable knowledge of how to write, what a storyline looks like, and why character development happens. I’ve read and benefited from Adam Sexton’s Master Class in Fiction Writing. But pulling off the writing of a complete novel was more of a struggle than I had expected, and I began to wonder:

• Would this be a book that I as a reader would want to read?
• Could I keep the increasingly disparate events and characters cohesive for the second and third “acts”?
• Would this novel be a book I would want to have my name on, or if I would try to disassociate myself with a tricked-out nom de plume?

It was then that I stumbled upon Randy Ingermanson’s snowflake method , which oriented me to perceive my idea as if I were a reader picking the book up off the shelf. I began by writing a single-sentence synopsis. That went well; however, at step 2 I froze: I could not write a summary of my novel in 5 cohesive sentences. There was just too much going on, and it was all over the map.

I forced myself to step back and said, OK, you have your main character, you have your scenario, you know the climax of the novel. Now write a 5 sentence summary around that, and make it intriguing.

My end result was not perfect, and it left most of my work on the first third of the novel unusable. But it is something I would want to read, and I am finally confident that I have planted the right seeds. I can now see how my summary fits into the traditional 3-act storyline that Peder Hill elaborates on in this diagram:

Very exciting.