Wednesday, July 7, 2010

Major Overhaul

Finally after years of watching Stephan King inspired movies I took a leap and actually read one of his books. Starting off small with his book On Writing (fabulous) followed by Eyes of the Dragon, I managed to make it to one of his hard core horror novels and picked up It.

To say this novel inspired me would be an understatement. I was utterly amazed by the way he seemed to paint characters and scenery with such vividness and realism. So finishing the 400,000+ words in less than a month I had to go back and look at R.A.G.E.

Now my poor manuscript had been written, edited, edited, edited and edited, then queried, queried, queried, rejected, rejected, rejected and then finally shelved, but after reading It I was determined to have another look. Holy Flatness Batman!! No wonder it had been rejected 50+ times. While my plot wasn't lacking, my faceless characters revolved in little individual spheres that didn't extend past their little sections of dialogue and the most basic of descriptions. Ding, ding, ding. A bell went off in my head and I rolled my neck, cracked my knuckles and sat right down for a complete rewrite. That was about three months ago or whenever I posted last on my sad neglected blog.

Since then the story has taken on depth in regards to setting descriptions as well as character development in the tone of 30,000 words. That's right. My measly 75,000 word novel has been bulked up to 105,000 words of depth and character.

I wish this story had a happy ending and I could proudly put into print that since then twenty agents have asked for the manuscript and 15 have asked to sign me and a publisher is waiting in the wings to offer me a six figure three book deal. Unfortunately I'm once again standing of the brink of querying and I can't seem to put together an absolutely smashing query letter to match my newly absolutely smashing manuscript. I'll get there, I know I will. No one puts in that much time on their computer and that much effort into a manuscript without trying to introduce it to the world. Literary Agents, you've been warned. Watch for new and improved R.A.G.E. coming your way. ;)

2 comments:

  1. So fabulous that IT inspired you! It's my favorite book of all time.

    It's not that your story doesn't have a happy ending... your story isn't finished yet. You will get there. You will. Just don't forget to enjoy the ride!

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  2. Thanks for the comment, Jennifer. Just what I needed to hear today. :)

    ReplyDelete

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