Wolf

Sometimes writing a novel is like assembling a puzzle but you’re missing the box that shows you the final image. You start putting pieces together and you think you’re making a lot of progress, storming through this little puzzle, only to discover that there are hundreds of pieces that fell off the table, somehow got caught under the rug.

I wrote the first six chapters of this novel in a burst. I then wrote about 500 words of chapter 7 and stopped to go back and fill in something I was missing between chapters one and two.

I’m 300 pages into this novel and I still have not gotten back to that original chapter 7.

Just yesterday, I realized I needed to rewrite chapter two and that I needed a new chapter three, and I keep finding these vast pockets of the puzzle that are missing. How could I ever have thought this was the whole picture?

Obviously this isn’t even close to where it needs to be! I need this scene and that scene, and how were these pieces scattered beneath my feet, under the coach, what are they doing in my coat pockets?

Many novels work for me like this. My novel Iron Wolf resulted from me realizing that what I thought were going to be chapters one and two should actually be the whole novel. The end of Broken Katana, Iron Wolf’s sequel, was where the original idea of Iron Wolf was meant to end. And so I often discover where I’m going, what I’m doing as I go, but this novel has been the one where this keeps happening.

And so when you start doing this, you also need to consider what makes this worth reading, and so I invented a new game for that new second chapter. A completely new game novel to this world, to this single town in this world. Which is fun for me, but it also creates an opportunity to engage the reader in a new way.

You’re following a character, sure, but now you’re also given the chance to cheer for something, to feel excited about something because this character is excited about it. This also serves the world, filling it out, making the novel feel less like a constructed world and more like a place.

Because the world is full of people just doing…stuff. There’s a whole lot of happening in the world and people finding joy in simple, stupid, improvisational games.

I was listening to a podcast with Patrick Rothfuss from years ago, back when he was actively calling himself a writer, and he mentioned how he went back to the early chapters of The Name of the Wind when he was still editing it before submitting it for publication. He talked about how he wanted to build layers for those chapters. Every chapter needed three layers to increase the odds that the reader would get hooked.

And I think you feel this in that book, but it’s also made me realize how effective a tool this is. And so I’m trying to do something similar.

You write a scene because you need to show the reader something or teach them something about your world/book. But what if you sneak in something else to hook them on top of that? And then why not try to hook them with something else still?

This layering becomes intoxicating.

When you cook, you talk about layering flavors. Building flavors the way you might build a house. Level by level, ingredient by ingredient, layer by layer, and you can do the same thing with writing.

A book may be all surface. That’s fine! Great, even! My Howl series is more like that.

But novels can also have great depth to them hiding beneath that surface of fun and excitement. Though I hate to break it to all you nerds, but you gotta nail the surface level if you want anyone to bother digging deeper.

How many different metaphors for writing can I put in here?