Control: Methods and Disasters…

I, Dalton Lewis, came up with a half dozen methods of writing. I wanted to switch up my writing and use a new angle while writing because I wasn’t selling enough copies of my novels For example, I read a book about writing and followed its advice about how to structure a novel. I tried them. I would like to summarize each one and how effectively they work. I watch a lot of youtube videos and they favor numbered lists — so I will use a numbered list:

1. “Monsters of River’s Valley” I wrote this novel using the Save the Cat method of writing. This one was doomed from the fact that I didn’t do enough rewriting of the novel, but saving the cat didn’t help either. The “save the cat” method means having a protagonist who does something good and saves someone at the beginning of the story so that one likes him or her. Then one has a problem which develops over the course of the story. I had a protagonist who saved someone from being beaten up at the beginning of the story and who becomes mentally ill as the story progresses. He is heroic and then has a character arc. He grows to fight the Netani, a cult which wants to bring forth a terrible Cthulu-like monster from another dimension. This story had everything going for it — magic, monsters, strong protagonist, action, romance, everything. It got two ratings — average one and a half stars. No reviews. Everyone hated it. Hated it hated it. Save the cat? A dud. I’d like to think it was a combination of a lot of factors — including the stupidity of a story in which the good guys face off against the bad guys with no real dramatic tension between said good guys.
2. “America High.” This was it. This was the big one. I wrote my masterpiece — the great American novel. Right? Wrong. Six ratings, average score three point two stars. One review, proclaiming it to be woke garbage. This was my novel. This was the novel that was supposed to be a work of art — my attempt to write a work of pure literature. People pretty much gave it three stars and thought it was woke garbage. It was better than “Monsters of River’s Valley.” Trying to write a work of literature — a work of pure art — gave me a better novel than trying to save little furry animals, but it made people think that I was preaching instead of telling a good story.
3. “Adventures at Mars State University.” I tried to write this one as a literary slasher story, trying to find art in the midst of dreck. This one was basically a series of stupid action sequences. It didn’t have any ideas behind it — just a lot of fighting and a little bit of characterization. There was a strange combination of stupidity and pretension which made this the worst of all worlds. I combined all the worst tropes of my writing into one little nightmare. People still read it. Two ratings, no reviews, average two stars. Terrible dreck, nightmare response.
4. “The Dark Gods” — I researched a real-life series of events and used them to create a story. I created a fantasy realm and developed the lore of the fantasy realm with my friend Finnegan. Then I made the story into a re-creation of the beginning of the American Civil War. I showed the tensions building up to the war over slavery and then the beginnings of slavery. No one noticed this book, so I guess it was a failure. No one read it or gave any ratings or reviews at all. I guess it’s the worst review of all — to be ignored.
5. “At Risk Teen Supers” — I tried to plot out a superhero teen novel with my friend. That was the method — get together with a buddy and plan out a novel for me to write and then write it. We worked on a story with a group of young people trying to develop powers and save lives with said powers. We had a series of wildfires for the characters to put out. I did check out some books on wildfires but didn’t do enough research on the subject so that fizzled out and didn’t feel real. Then I had a bad guy who was trying to manipulate the news or something, I don’t really remember who he was or what he was trying to do. I just remember no one caring about this book either. Two ratings, no reviews, three and a half stars.
6. “Ascension” — I tried to write a realistic story about my struggles with insanity and paranoid schizophrenia. I just talked about my life and experiences in a plain and devastating manner, talking about what went so catastrophically wrong with my life. This included no fighting, no bad guys, no saving the world, and no saving cats. I didn’t specifically try for high-and-mighty irony but included literary aspects when they fit. Sixteen ratings, three point eight stars. Two reviews, both positive reviews, saying that the book was a good example of life with a debilitating mental illness. This one was one of my hits.
7. “American Starfleet Independence” — I wrote this as a novel in which I recreated a real-life series of battles while trying to write a work of art — the greatest writing I could possibly write. I showed the real-life naval battles at Guadalcanal as a series of spaceship battles fighting over a planet far away from Earth. I did quite a bit of research and did work my hardest at writing something that people would like — and something that had honorable and interesting villains. Thirty-three ratings, three point five rating, two reviews, reviews negative, saying I don’t know about the military or outer space. That’s true, I suppose, but fifty-five percent of ratings are four or five stars, and thirteen-thousand pages read on the lending library at last count means that people read this one a lot — a lot.

Those are seven of my books, written with different methods and styles, and certain methods are better than others. Talking about one’s own life or trying to write intelligently while writing about an interesting subject, for example, are the right ingredients for an interesting novel. I’m writing another realistic novel about mental health issues. We’ll see how it goes.

Thanks, and take care, friends.