Mel's Shopping Diary
Race to the Finish Line
June 12, 2006Hi everyone, my book ANGELS ON SUNSET BOULEVARD is due this Friday so it's been manic over here as I try to finish it. I know it's just a first draft, but I really want to make sure all the plot kinks are worked out before I turn it in. Right now it looks like it's going to be a 300 page book, which is a bit of a shock to me since I was only planning to write 240 pages, but the way it's shaping up, the first act is so long I need to balance it out so it's not so top-heavy.
The good news is that I finally figured out the book but now I have to go back and rewrite a lot of the beginning chapters so that they match with the end. This is something I have learned the hard way, novels that are too "episodic" in which separate incidents happen that don't seem to add up to a whole, are essentially considered plotless. You have to think of your novel as one whole book, and every chapter has to work as part of that whole--you can't introduce scenes or characters and then drop them later, or never explain what they're doing there.
So now that I have my big plot, I have to make sure that everything ties in to the big bang at the end, and if it doesn't it either gets deleted, or changed so that it fits. Novels are like puzzles, I think.
In other news, our air-conditioning is still on the fritz, so I'm still living here at the family home in Pasadena. Mike and I are going to Palm Springs on Wednesday again for his work, so I'm looking forward to writing poolside.
I probably won't blog until I turn in the book, so have a good week everyone!
xoxo
Mel