Emotional Content

An emotional baseline?

I've found writing my current book very challenging in almost every aspect, which admittedly was the intention. When I first came up with the idea it was one of those moments where the impossible seemed entirely probable. It has been said I'm  trying to achieve too much, trying to layer in too many themes. Quite accurately, I think. But that for me is part of the challenge. Writing any kind of book is an achievement for sure. I've learned a lot about taking a mind on a reading journey, now I want to push it further. The great thing about being my own publisher is I get to do what the hell I like. Writing TMWWRWs has been an incredible learning experience, similar in some ways to writing Chasing Innocence, because writing in a different perspective feels like learning to write all over again. This time around it feels so much more difficult. CI was, at least in my mind, very much about real people put in extraordinary situations. TMWWRWs is thriller, action laced with paranormal. It attempts to be ketchup (courtesy of Malcolm Gladwell) and it's got a soundtrack (thanks to Mr Gould). The characters at its core are real but born from my favourite comic and fiction heroes, without the costumes. Did I mention I've struggled mightily.

The struggles have been documented here in my monthly WordWatchers posts. These last two months though it has really felt like I've hit my stride, increasingly feeling at ease with the main character and the flow of the story. So much so I really wanted to get my head down during July and start thinking about the close of act two. I decided to impose a minimal daily word count.

I don't usually work to a word count because it's easy to get caught trying to move forward and lose sight of what you’re actually trying to do, which is enthral a wide audience. The word count was set at five hundred daily words, which is achievable enough to get me sat in-front of the keyboard, even with the distractions of summer all around, especially this summer. It has gone well. I hit seven thousand words in ten days. I've started to approach sections of the story I dreamed about way back when I first imagined a character called The Handyman. I'm at the bit where we pull together everything that's happened so far and turn the reader on a swell of emotion towards act three. Except I didn't. Instead I hit a very high and deep mental wall.

Emotions are a difficult thing. TMWWRWs is written in the present tense first person perspective. I keep mulling if this is the right perspective but every time I do I come back thinking it absolutely is. The knock for this type of POV though, is that it's very immediate with the reader right in there with the character's every thought. The problem is that I struggle to define or comprehend my own emotional thoughts, at least to write them down, let alone for a fictional character. While I can hear Marcus' voice in my head and I have a real sense for him as a man and a mostly moral human, I've struggled to calibrate his emotions. I think this is exacerbated by the very personal POV of the story. Despite Marcus being an ex-bodyguard once contracted to the US Government, a very physical and sometimes unnaturally capable human, he is in many respects an everyman. A uniquely skilled human trying to work out the world around him. He doesn't have all the answers, he doesn't have an out there IQ or a batcave or a butler. His journey is about trying to understand why the woman he loves was murdered, about realising the questions and hunting down the answers. Albeit in a action thriller setting with that dash of paranormal. 

My immediate reaction to this emotional problem was somewhat unorthodox - I decided to change perspective completely, not Marcus’ but mine. With a respectable word count already in the bag I mothballed my Windows NetBook and got me an Apple Macbook Air. It was a move long overdue and discussed here. It gave me a chance to order my thoughts without worrying too much about being unproductive. At other times a problem like this might have been resolved by reading a book or listening endlessly to Moby, or both.

In mulling the problem I looked long and hard about who I think Marcus is. He is not a guy that wears his heart on his sleeve but he is meant to be more human than many men in thriller fiction. Jack Reacher comes to mind as the a-typical one man army and police department and super-computer in a super sized and lethal body. Reacher is rarely driven by any emotion outside of retribution or his own off the scale sense of honour. As a Reacher fan I'm obviously influenced by Lee Child's writing but Marcus isn't Reacher - that would do a dis-service to everything I'm trying to achieve in this series. However, he's a lot closer to Reacher than he is me. So I sat down and started reading the Reacher novels again in the hope I could find Marcus' emotional standpoint. I read Killing Floor and Persuader, which are both written in the first person although not present tense. I'm glad to say I'd got it figured halfway through Persuader.

Armed with this emotional standpoint I decided now was a good time to go back and fill some of the vast, gaping holes at the beginning of the story that I left for the 'edit', as I pitched and rolled onwards with this first draft. Many of these were moments that defined the key characters, but I didn't know what defined them till I got to this stage. If that makes sense?  

These last few weeks have taught me a new set of very valuable writing lessons. Publishing my first book taught me how much of a good story is created in the edit. Writing TMWWRWs largely as an outline so I can get to the edit, has brought to me the realisation just how much of a good story is created during the first draft.