Schizophrenic’s Guide: Horror, redone
I, Dalton Lewis, rewrote a novel. I did this because of a problem. I had written a bad novel. It sucked.
It sucked really badly.
How badly?
I’ve been considered one of the worst writers. I know that. This one was, in terms of my books, one of the worst received books that I ever published. No one liked this book. No one gave this book a recommendation.
It received four ratings and zero reviews on release. It averaged 1.6 out of 5 stars. It had three one-star ratings and one three-star rating. People hated it more than they hated almost any book in existence.
I’ve been thinking about what went wrong. I needed flaws for my characters for the reader to care about them more. They had to pop, be memorable, be people you can root for and want to spend time with. In addition I needed to develop arcs for them. They needed storylines.
I rewrote the first chapter maybe a dozen times. It’s an artificial intelligence’s first few minutes of reality. In the original novel he gets into a huge fight and blows up an enemy spaceship. I decided to develop his personality and character and make you empathize with him and develop the world and characters before showing huge fights and death. That makes the deaths pop and make more of an impact when they do happen.
The plan: rewrite most of the words in the book. I don’t know if I succeeded, but it’s longer and more full of character and story. I didn’t change all of the fights all that much — they seemed good. I changed the circumstances of the fights and the dialogue during said fights to punch it up.
I also tried to make the novel less woke and liberal — making it into something without a conscious political objective. I took out a storyline in which humans and aliens are conspiring together to start up a war between each other in order to have a fight that they both wanted — to further their conservative agendas. I cut that out and made the conservative humans right in their agenda to defend Earth and humanity’s interests.
I was way too woke.
Ouch.
I wanted to do better.
I rewrote the book.
I changed an enormous amount to the book. It’s six thousand words longer or so — I added a lot of character work. I basically developed the people to make you care for them and tried to make the story more intelligent and respect the people and give them storylines instead of letting it stay a mindless slasher in which people are butchered who are fine and good and who no one feels anything about.
What, in particular, happens during the story? We meet the varied and interesting inhabitants of Mars State University Space Station and their existence, and we get to know them and like them. There is a sorority with Amber, junior military badass, and Alicia, who is in charge of the sorority. They both have secrets — things which will be exposed later in the story.
Oda Nobunaga, named after Japan’s greatest hero, is a young man studying to be a military mind who is an expert at strategy and tactics and military history. His father is dying of Parkinson’s and cancer — the old double death diagnosis. He has to deal with the mortality of his father and his lust for several people on the station. He is in love with Amber — who does not love him back.
Bay — Immanuel Bay — is, quite possibly, the worst soldier in the military. He isn’t scared or anything — he just drinks on the job and tries to avoid fights whenever possible. He hates combat and rarely fights anyone — only when absolutely necessary. He is mourning a terrible loss.
Alexis Hartpen is a teenage genius who works for scary military types and had been — until recently — living at government blacksites, doing scary research for the government that it doesn’t want to admit exists. During such research she found time for a boyfriend — but this one is real trouble. She has to negotiate work and her obligations to a troubled boyfriend who is hurting and beautiful…
Anna Watson is a beautiful actor. She was the second lead on a teen drama series for eight years and then had a breakdown and decided to take a few years off and go to college. She is addicted to uppers and capable of handling herself. She meets Frake, a confused and scared young man who asks for her help. This leads to dangerous situations.
I wanted to give the characters flaws in this one. This gives them humanity and presents the reader with characters to believe in and sympathize with. I like characters who have flaws — the failures and the fuckups in the world, watching them deal with their flaws and failures. That’s what is interesting to me, not the perfect heroes who dashingly win every fight.
The book is three dollars now or free in a few days. I want to make money off of my writing. I have spectacularly failed to do so until now. I want to make it with my writing soon. I am forty-five years old. I am running out of time to make it as a writer. We’ll see if I’m improving enough to make a difference.
Thanks, and take care, friends.
