Wolf

The prologue has changed dramatically since posting it in here, which will someday make for an interesting point of contrast. I dropped a character from the novel, exchanged him with one who will be central to the rest of the book, and also beefed up most of what was there. The original prologue was about 1,500 words and it’s now 3,100 or so.

This all came through talking to my wife. She’s a good sounding board for my writing because she’s essentially what you might call the normie view. And so when she gets confused about something that I think is clever, that’s a sign. Doesn’t mean I was wrong and she’s right or vice versa, but it means that things that I assume about a reader get balanced by her as a reader.

I have always assumed that the reader is at least as smart as me. This is easy because I’m quite dumb. But I also assume readers have not read nearly as many novels as me. But I forget exactly what this means. Conventions that are comfortable to me might be unusual or perplexing to someone who hasn’t read 1,000 books this decade.

We’ve been talking about perspective as well. I figured we’d stick with third for the very simple reason that I assume my wife will have an issue with my first person narration of a young woman. But she wants a first person POV and so this will take some trial and error, I imagine. Finding the right voice. The right cadence and texture of narration.

My wife is a planner but also somewhat indecisive when it comes to her narrative. This is normal. So am I. The difference is that rather than sit and think about it, I just dive in. By writing it out, everything solidifies by virtue of it now being on the page. If I’m not sure how a character should behave, I just leap into the scene and see how it goes. That action then defines how the character behaves in that situation because that’s what happened.

It’s simple. And it all fits easily into my head.

Of course, writing with someone else, especially when the story is theirs, makes for some necessary compromises.

But we can work that out. Her concern is that I won’t be invested in writing the book since it’s not my idea, but I actually kind of like this working to a spec.

Anyway, probably going to write the first chapter tomorrow, which takes place at a public execution.

I mean, this is exactly the kind of novel I would write so my wife really shouldn’t worry.