Control: I Wrote a Bad Novel — And Now I Want to Write a Better One…

I, Dalton Lewis, have struggled recently. What I mean by that: I wrote a bad novel. I wrote one that everyone hated. Two stars. I have two ratings of my most recent novel — averaging two stars. Damn. That’s not good. It’s awful — I wrote a novel that was universally hated. Am I proud of it? I guess so. My mom told me not to admit that it’s a slasher and so I didn’t admit to that in the advertisement of the novel. I don’t think it mattered: people didn’t like the novel and didn’t tell me why. They found it reprehensible. I worked for countless hours trying to write a wonderful novel about something amazing — with unforgettable characters and amazing themes. Nobody liked it. They hated it, in fact.

I’m doing something wrong. Clearly. I’m not telling the right truth about life in the right way — I’m telling tales that don’t resonate with people. My main characters included a marine who hated violence and fighting and tried to avoid it whenever he could. I thought he was ironic and brilliant. No. No one cared. I created a gay girl couple with a dominating popular girl and a pretty teen genius who idolizes her. No one cared. I had them fighting against an unstoppable slasher villain. They still didn’t care at all. I created a couple of AI’s and showed the beginnings of their lives and wanted people to understand and feel for them and love them. No one loved them. No one liked them. The novel collapsed and failed.

What went wrong? Something went wrong in the creation of the plot and characters. I didn’t create characters or plot that people responded to. I created cardboard characters without enough flaws and wonderful traits to be characters that people respond to. I didn’t create a plot based off of things that would happen in that setting. People didn’t want to read about characters trapped in a space station without any morals. People didn’t want to read about a first contact situation in which we needed to learn how to make peace with the good aliens and fight the bad aliens. It was trite, woke, and obvious that the good aliens were good and the bad aliens were bad — nothing was interesting. The good guys were just good and the bad guys were just bad, and that isn’t very interesting.

I’m creating characters and situations that people don’t like or respond to. I should be creating truth — showing what is wrong with life or wonderful about life. I should be showing the beauty in the tragic nature of existence. Somehow that got lost along the way with all the writing about fighting and saving lives and bad guys and heroes and so on. The underlying emotional truth was lost, and that is a shame.

How does one rebound from a disaster? I’m trying to write about something that really happened and fictionalizing it. I decided to research the American Civil War and turn it into a fantasy novel with elves, orcs, dwarves, and gods. I am reading Twelve Years A Slave. I am watching the Ken Burns documentary on the Civil War. I am reading the book based on the documentary.

How am I creating characters? I am creating people in my mind and letting them live in my daydreams for a bit. I am also basing some people off of people that I know in my life or people that are real people from history. Elements of US Grant are evident in my lead character in my new novel. His story is an interesting one — he became a great man in his middle-age after failing in the military during peacetime. I wanted to show reality — real emotional truth and the hardships and disasters that people can face during their lives. I want to show that truth. That’s the goal with the next novel. Emotional truth.

Thanks, and take care, friends.