So, I’ve found myself a little bit stuck. Two-thirds of the way done with Adam’s Name, which is turning out to be novella length, and I’m stuck. I don’t like the outline for the third section. It introduces a new character whose role could easily be fulfilled by someone who’s already in the story. It makes the ending cheap, but believable. I like very much where the characters ended up, but I really don’t like how they got there.

I did something that I don’t often do. I talked to my wife about my writing. As with most things that I am passionate about, I slip all too easily into taking-it-personally mode when she and I talk shop. You see, she’s a writer too, with actual degrees, and all kinds of smarts. But her focus, when it comes to both reading and writing, is on a totally different group of genres. Until I picked up Adam’s Name again, anyway.

She asked lots and lots of whys. At the get-go, it made me a bit uncomfortable, so I fired back with a why of my own: why do these details matter if the story is character driven? Because what the characters do and why is important, she said. Not just with each other, but with the world (or worlds) that they live in. She also agreed with me that in a novella, the final third of the story was far too late to bring in a new character. She was, of course, right on both counts. Since then, I’ve been worldbuilding. I’ve determined what Adam is, where he came from and how, and thus established how he can do what he does. Much of this came from my wife’s wouldn’t-it-be-cool-if suggestions, which I tweaked and ran with.

I’m now working on the villain, who I like to call our good friend Walter. Figuring out just how villainous he is has proven difficult. I may end up being surprised with a human being as a villain, instead of an embodied human flaw. But will a human being contain enough cheese? Maybe. There is that whole demon pact thing.

From my writing journal, back in January:

Julia is being very hard to nail down. I guess that I shouldn’t be surprised. For a main character, she’s entering the story quite late. So, while the extras of her world have been getting attention, histories, and the beginnings of character development, she’s only showed up as a cute and flirty waitress at a pool hall.

So, she needs to hit the ground running. Maybe? All the cool facts about the life she leads or her flaws or whatever won’t make her feel living as you read. They won’t make the reader feel like they already know her. Because they don’t know her. So, I guess I’m trying to cheat.

Long back and forth isn’t going to do that. Conversation is great, but it doesn’t get you inside the character’s head. The other characters are being put through a gaming device – the dreamscape – and we’ll see deeper into them through their reactions. The hand-off to Julia should be abrupt. Writing it from her point of view, so she’ll be internally flipping out about the dreams, but she’ll refuse to work in a group. She’ll say that she’ll take the case, try to get the gun, get zapped, and shoo them out of the pool hall. Then we’ll follow the group for a bit, and follow Adam until he *OMGSPOILER*. If it’s going to be that long until we see her again, am I introducing her too soon?

And more, from this past Sunday:

I don’t like the hand-off of Adam from Seth and Susan to Julia. It’s forced. It feels fake. It’s preventing me from moving forward. What would happen if Julia wasn’t at the pool hall, if her shift was over? I’d have to send Sol and Jonah, and have Seth be the one that hustles over to Susan’s apartment. That would also allow for some physical intimacy between Seth & Susan. Maybe this would work better:

I then proceeded to re-outline the progression of the entire novel, starting from switching Seth out for Sol in rushing over to Susan’s flat.  Since then, I’ve been writing like a fiend.

From my writing journal, back in December:

Need to get Julia up to speed, but have her hesitate. She’s a solitary that has been trying to unravel a lot of Detroit’s more spooky mysteries on her own. She has had no formal training as a witch or an investigator. She has a natural talent being the former, and has picked up quite a bit from books, spiritual advisers, and her own experiences with the paranormal. Her continued rookie mistakes with the latter have the DPD on the lookout for someone with her description for breaking and entering, petty theft, and connection with an arson suspect.

She avoids serious contact with others so that she can be free to investigate on her own, as she pleases. She has no delusions about protecting others. Also, she has been dreaming of Adam. It is unclear is she is picking up on Walter’s manipulation of Jonah, or if she is just that spiritually tuned in to her city.

The scene at the pool hall will be a hand-off of Adam to Julia, as she’s an intended main character of her world. What to do with the rest? They’re not going to sit on their hands.

No, of course not. They see two sides of this – Adam vs. Walter. So, they’re going to track Walter down. Walter doesn’t even come to their world, he’s manipulating through dreams for Bob’s sake. Shared dream? Shared dreamscape?

From my writing journal, back in November:

Well, crap. What are Jonah and Seth supposed to do? Seth is taking command, even though he won’t be going on the trip to the *OMGSPOILER*. Seth and Susan, by the end of the night, will end up physically entangled, if not romantically. The girl that gave Sol her number ends up being Julia, the witch-in-training. So, Seth will state that they need an expert in the strange, Jonah will volunteer Julia, and Seth will gloat about the phone number once more.