{"id":1244,"date":"2022-04-07T14:56:07","date_gmt":"2022-04-07T14:56:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gerald-hornsby.com\/blog\/?p=1244"},"modified":"2022-04-09T07:52:14","modified_gmt":"2022-04-09T07:52:14","slug":"my-novelling-journey-a-story-in-3-acts-part2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gerald-hornsby.com\/blog\/2022\/04\/07\/my-novelling-journey-a-story-in-3-acts-part2\/","title":{"rendered":"My Novelling Journey – a story in 3 acts-part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

ACT TWO – Confrontation<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Typically the longest of all three sections: Act Two usually comprises the second and third quarters of the story.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

RISING ACTION<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The protagonist gets to know their new surroundings and starts to understand the challenges that lay before them.<\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2012:<\/strong> Using both NaNoWriMo and 100k100days, I start to think about the stories that I want to write. I\u2019m excited by this new decision, and over the next few years, I create more and better stories. But at the back of my mind, there\u2019s a niggling thought – I\u2019m just working hard to create more and more wasted words.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Each new project is attacked with gusto, and I am convinced that this novel will be my breakthrough. I even went as far as submitting one of my novels (\u201cFirewall\u201d, which still hasn\u2019t seen the light of day) to a publisher. No response.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Each novel is a challenge, a desire to tell a good story with a well-crafted manuscript. And after writing it, I recognise that something goes wrong from around the halfway point. I think I need to look into that, to see if there\u2019s a way I can improve that part of the novel. A documentary about Ian Rankin highlights an issue which sounds familiar  https:\/\/youtu.be\/9FkHgEkVkSY?t=1612<\/a> – where his wife talks about the page 65 pause. It\u2019s the imposter syndrome thing, where most authors I speak to get to a half to two-thirds point in the book where we suddenly question what we\u2019ve written.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

MIDPOINT<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s no big surprise that the Midpoint takes place at\u2026 drumroll, please\u2026 the middle of the story! A significant event should take place here, usually involving something going horribly wrong.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

2016:<\/strong> This is the point where my antagonist changes – from a single, identifiable novel, to my mounting catalogue of stories and first drafts that I keep building. I now have eight poor first drafts, a set of six novellas, and various bits and pieces that I\u2019ve been working on. But it has become obvious that I\u2019m getting nowhere with this policy. It\u2019s just that I\u2019m not happy with any of the novels I\u2019ve written. They seem weak, drawn-out, saggy, and generally unsatisfying. But I\u2019m beginning to realise that my attitude is flawed: that simply by starting the next, and oh-so-much-better novel, things will sort themselves out. The alternative might be that I just can\u2019t write novel-length fiction, and I\u2019ll never produce a novel worth anything. Maybe the NEXT novel will be my breakthrough.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Spoiler alert – it wasn\u2019t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

THE DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The main character hits bottom, and wallows in hopelessness. The \u2018Why hast thou forsaken me, Lord?\u2019 moment. Mourning the loss of what has \u201cdied\u201d \u2013 the dream, the goal, the mentor character, the love of your life, etc. But, you must fall completely before you can pick yourself back up and try again.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

2017:<\/strong> My antagonist has changed. I was fighting the good fight with each novel as I approached it, but I began to see the bigger threat, the Boss Level behind. What was it? It was my HUGE catalogue of unfinished work. It sits behind me, towering – an unstable jumble of words, threatening to topple and engulf me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I had a works-in-progress spreadsheet, and every time I added a new novel, and more words, the gross sight of all those titles, all those million-plus words, was weighing heavier and heavier upon me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would sometimes open up the file of one of those stories. I\u2019d review where I was in the story – exactly how complete was it when I left off? Maybe if the story stood up, and needed just an injection of an edit to bring it to life, like the monster of Dr. Frankenstein. Then I\u2019d close the file soon after. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Looking inside the beast only made matters worse. I had eight first drafts, but nothing I felt like working on, because I knew they all required a massive rewrite. And at this stage, I didn\u2019t know how to do that, because I was afraid that rewriting it, without changing my process, wouldn\u2019t affect the viability of the story in any way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s a subplot<\/strong> here. In an effort to fix my poor storytelling, I began to look into ways of fixing the saggy middle and to control the pacing better, since I recognised this was a major problem. I started to investigate the structure of storytelling. I bought lots of books and read lots of websites and articles. There were many analogies – I liked the one about building the internal frame of a house before constructing the walls and floors. And about having an architect\u2019s drawings before breaking ground. That made sense to me. You could still change the colours on the walls, even turn a bedroom into a study, the thing wouldn\u2019t fall down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But, going back to the massive weight of my unfinished back catalogue, threatening to engulf me, I was no further forward. I seriously needed help. Would anyone be able to help me out of this huge mess of my own making?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PLOT POINT TWO or BREAK INTO ACT THREE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The aftermath of the Midpoint crisis will force the protagonist to pivot from being a \u201cpassenger\u201d to a more proactive force to be reckoned with. Think of Plot Point Two as the pep talk your character needs in order to stand up straight and get ready to meet their antagonist head on.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

 2018:<\/strong> Step forward my lovely writing group friends. As a group, we rented out a large house in the Essex countryside as a writing retreat. During an after-lunch session, I laid out my sheets in front of them. What I\u2019d written, which genre they fitted into, how many words and what their status was – complete, 80% complete, and so on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have a great image in my head of half a dozen friends, talking amongst themselves, swapping pieces of paper like \u201cI\u2019ve got a police procedural here\u201d and \u201coh, I\u2019ve got one of those, too – let\u2019s put them together\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then we did the most important task of this whole process. One friend asked \u201cwhat are you most passionate about?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019d never thought of asking myself that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI enjoy reading crime stories, and I enjoy writing about crime. I like to write about someone trying to get away with illegal or immoral behaviour, and how they might be caught. I enjoy politics, and I feel like much of the political landscape seems to be full of self-serving individuals with money changing hands in shady deals. I enjoy writing about climate change, and how we seem to be sleepwalking into a global climate disaster, because no one is prepared to make the difficult decisions and change people\u2019s ways of life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In that dining room, there was more discussion amongst my friends, and swapping of pieces of paper.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cRight,\u201d said the person with three piles of paper in front of them. \u201cThis is your crime. There are various types, including police procedurals and cosy crime, but this is crime.\u201d She laid her hand on another pile. \u201cThis is your politics, with a side order of climate change and a sprinkling of crime.\u201d She laid her hand on the last pile. \u201cThis is your \u2018none of the above\u2019 pile. It doesn\u2019t fit into either of those two categories, and from the amount of words in them, it seems like you\u2019re not so passionate about them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was right. Romance isn\u2019t my thing. Fantasy isn\u2019t my thing. I hadn\u2019t even shared with them the erotic novel I\u2019d started writing. Good thing, too. It was awful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAnd of these two,\u201d she said, laying her hands on the politics and crime piles. \u201cwhich do you feel most passionate about.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Politics. No question. Hands down. I despise corruption.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the meantime, in my story structure subplot<\/strong>, I\u2019d written a book on Story Design (https:\/\/gerald-hornsby.com\/story-design\/<\/a>) and begun to see how a Save The Cat outline, from the late Blake Snyder, might help guide my manuscript through the story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tomorrow – Act Three!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thanks to the Reedsy Blog Three Act Structure<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have just completed my one-minute pitch for the Efficient Novelist course! See below:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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