Control: Jace Windhelm

I, Dalton Lewis, worked my ass off to write a novel, Teenage Nightmare Chronicles. I included sex and violence and horror elements and characters that started ugly but ended beautiful. I crafted an epic universe in which contemporary teens were being butchered by unique and interesting villains. Everyone hated it. Hated it. They didn’t claim to read much of my writing, but everyone told me to trash that novel and not work any more on that. People who never admitted to reading my work told me that this one wasn’t one to spend more time on — so I won’t. I don’t know what to say about that except that I’m sorry that the novel didn’t work. I wrote about a bunch of unlikable characters and tried to have a few of them secretly be good people. I wanted to surprise the audience by showing the leads being incredible and some other characters turn out to be bad guys and die. Turns out the audience needs someone to relate to on page one — not page fifty. Someone has to grab the audience.

Where do those characters go? What happens to the characters of the thousands of books written each year that don’t sell? They are gone and abandoned. I worked really hard on some of those characters. Jace Windhelm was a brilliant writer who decided to test the best teenagers and kill the ones who were either assholes or weren’t worthy. I wanted him to be a cultural icon, someone noticed the way people fear the Joker or Loki. I didn’t want the novel to be forgotten by everyone in society. I am disgusted to say that thousands of novelists invent villains that no one reads about or remembers.

I want to write better second drafts. Neil Gaiman and Patrick Rothfuss, according to the internet, emphasize the quality of a well-written second draft. In The Name of the Wind Rothfuss has clearly created a well-researched college and a world with a custom magic system which sounds legitimate. Gaiman’s wonderful worlds are full of unique characters, such as Death of the Endless, one of the kindest, well-hearted characters around.

What should one do when one fails in life? I suppose that one has to work harder and better. I know that, in fiction, hardworking protagonists work harder and harder and eventually succeed big in life. In story characters win Pulitzer Prizes like they are given to tenth grade journalism students. In story people save the world regularly — the Avengers alone have saved the world from Loki, Ultron, Thanos, and Hydra. In the real world I’ve never saved the world. I know, shocking and scary. I still have yet to save the planet from a supervillain in the real world — in a literal sense. Terrible.

We ignore the writing that isn’t the best writing in the history of existence, and I think that’s sad. I want more people to read each other’s writing — we struggling writers should read each others’ work and comment on it. That’s something that I don’t do. I should.

I am working on a new novel, a novel about middle school. I want to write something in which God and Satan both show up in someone’s middle school and interact with the tweens in the middle school. I think that’s a strong premise for a story. We’ll see if I can craft something that people will find enjoyable and intelligent.

Thanks, and take care, friends.