Control: Novel Release
How does one write better?
That’s the question, right?
How to write better. How to write a masterpiece. How do I move you, the reader, to tears, or to joy? How do I make you feel something, something real?
I have written twenty books, but I have yet to write a masterpiece. I have yet to have someone say, I wept when I read your book. I want that.
Twenty books is a ton of content, and I’m proud of that. I’m getting better. I have to be getting better. It’s unconscionable that I’m not getting better. My characters need to sound authentic. My scenes need to seem well put together. The plot needs to develop naturally from scene to scene.
I’m trying. I’m giving it my everything.
I tried to daydream every scene for the first draft of this one. That created an interesting story with some fun violence: pirates attack a military ship and there’s some action. An AI, Phil Lance, is created and immediately told to fix the starboard capacitors and reload the missiles. He has no idea what a capacitor is or where the starboard missiles are, but he gives it his all anyway.
Amber and Alicia are sorority girls — Amber a violence girl, Alicia running the sorority and managing the lab tests for the students at the facility. Alicia’s whip-smart and gets A’s, but she’s not as smart as Alexis, the super-genius teen girl who finds a signal making college students go berserk and attack each other. The first half of the book involves trying to fix this calamity.
Oda Nobunaga is a strategy and tactics guy. He tries to use his intellect to solve impossible choices. His dad is dying, and he must come to terms with mortality. Bay is a marine who drinks and tries to avoid violence whenever possible. He is, by all accounts, a terrible marine. Abrace, as mentioned, is an AI detective trying to solve a sinister mystery.
Developing plot lines is something difficult for me because I have paranoid schizophrenia and have trouble focusing on such things — but of course that is a bullshit excuse. I have to overcome that and build characters and stories as the plot develops. Alicia and Alexis have to start a romance and realize that they care about each other. Abrace has to develop the ability to trust his fellows and believe that he might succeed — despite his programming.
I often think of ways of writing better. For example, I try to emulate Shakespeare when I write, or I try to watch what happens as I write it. I currently try to analyze what I write as I write it: think about what I’m writing and why. I think that’s the best method, to think rationally and maturely about what I am writing.
I wrote two books that didn’t hit with audiences this year and one that did. American Delusions was about twenty years in the lives of two people with mental illnesses. Nobody read it. America High was about a high school as a microcosm of America, with the various characters representing various aspects of American life and culture. Nobody read it. I turned the World War II battle of Guadalcanal into a military sci-fi story with spaceships instead of sea ships. It was a massive hit, with over ten thousand lending library pages read, 2500 copies downloaded, and 30 people giving it ratings, with about fifty percent of ratings being four or five stars.
This is another military sci-fi story, but it’s not the exact same thing. This is a set of horror adventure set pieces. This is a story about people trying to avoid a war and come up with intellectual solutions to difficult problems.
I hope you give it a chance. I want this to become a paid career. I’m getting there. I just need some help.
Thanks, and take care, friends.
