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.

From my writing journal, back in October:

Start the first scene in the coney, as it is now. Describe the place, and the people, and Seth’s worry about Susan’s state of mind. Open near the end of their visit and bring the run-in with Adam closer to the beginning.

This was the second time that I started a rewrite of Adam’s Name, so I was on the line about whether I just needed to chuck the piece or if it could be fixed. I had tried to rewrite the conversation-via-journal as regular conversation, but it still felt choppy and forced. It was a few more months before I felt the urge to revisit it, this time with the idea to include structure, as well as dialogue, in the rewrite.  So far, the story has done nothing but improve.

From my writing journal, back in October:

I wonder if I’ve still got the printouts of the Coney Island back-and-forth for Adam’s Name. I may need to cut the whole scene. I could start the story right before Adam and Susan trip over each other. Instead of entertaining the idea of creating an amateur mafia, Seth and Sol are concerned about the sanity and well-being of their friend. Downplay the poorly written mob book angle and focus on the characters discovering the story around them.

There’s far too much telling instead of showing in the current draft. Rewrite from scratch.

What about the romance angle? Tension between Susan and Seth. How can you be such good friends without at least a little bit of that?

Instead of tying things up, Susan and Sol’s disappearance shatters the story. It’s supposed to, really, but is there too much jarring happening on the reader’s end?

Instead of Adam and Julia meeting her witch mentor right after the club, Adam should spend the night at her apartment. Julia should reveal that she’s been dreaming about him, which will make him break down and divulge everything that’s been happening to him. He’ll try to contact his buddies, only to find that he’s slipped into Julia’s world.

– Need to figure out how Adam gets to his cash to get his bike.

– He’ll push himself back into the “real” world as part of figuring out what’s going on.

I’ve rewritten the first, and largest, part of Adam’s Name.  Its first working title was Motor City Mafia, and was intended on having a pulpy, cheesy feel that revolved around a story that even the characters knew was implausible.  I had attempted to fine-tune this story, after it had collected dust for a few years, but what it needed was a full rewrite. Instead of feeling like real people stuck in bad writing, it was just bad writing.

The flow is better, the story is better, and the characters seem far more comfortable in their roles.  They now know that they’re the background noise, the filler, the extras in their world, and that running into Adam has pulled them out of that.  Seth, Susan, Sol, and Jonah are all making the journey to main characters, and are not entirely happy with how that’s going.  Instead of leaving them isolated in their introductory chapter, as I did in the last few versions, I’m going to carry the cast through, and find out how long they can hold up in the tornado that is building around Adam.

Things I’m looking forward to in the next chapter:

• Solidifying the central mystery/conflict of the story
• Writing some steamy scenes
• Killing off one of the characters in strange circumstances