NOVEL TROUBLE

Novels always give you trouble. Right now, I'm about 90 pages into the current rewrite, and it doesn't seem suspenseful enough or mysterious enough.

For suspense, you need to have dramatic questions that drive the story. For a sense of mystery, you need to have important things that need explaining.

I'm feeling like I don't have enough of either one, so I'm introducing a new character who is going to go up against the scariest character I've ever invented and see what happens to him. He's just a college kid, too. Poor guy.

I think of Hamlet, who comes home to find his father dead and his uncle married to his mother. He suspects his uncle killed his father. Dum-dee-dum-dum.

Raymond Chandler said that when he had trouble, he would just bring in a new character with a gun in his hand. This may be just the opposite. A gun implies power, and this kid has little of that.

Wish me luck. And him, too.

-- Roger

© Copyright 2011, Roger R. Angle