Here’s an update on my current work in progress, ‘A Case of Make Believe’, which is still a working title and not yet finalised. I am up to chapter 17, around 65,000 words and it’s strange…
Usually, a story will flow in order of events, and after I’ve done the first draft, I might go back and move things around. However, I usually start writing at chapter one and wander forwards from there. With this one, I wanted to get the finale down on paper so much I have already written it, and that’s very unusual for me. I needed what was the opening chapter to tie up exactly with the finale/climax, so maybe that was why I did it that way around. Now, though, that opening chapter has become the ‘smoking gun’ and won’t appear at the beginning, it will have to slip in later on, otherwise, I will have given away too much at the start…
It’s still interesting, though, how things can be chopped and changed, and how as a writer you come to instinctively know when something is or isn’t right. At first, the opening (a piece by Larkin Chase published in a newspaper in 1893) seemed to be exactly right for how I wanted things to start. Now, though, 65,000 words in, I can see that it needs to come later. The important thing, though, is that it’s written, and as I always say, ‘Don’t get it right, get it written.’ Then later, you can get it right.
What’s also interesting about this one is that I feel like I want to get to the denouement already. I aim for around 90K to 100K words per novel these days, so the reader has plenty to get their teeth into. This one, at 65K feels like I could be done with it by 70K, and that sets off alarm bells for me. It means there’s something missing, and I know what it is. So, that will have to be written in when I get to draft two.
Still, it’s fun, there are a couple of new characters, a lot of darkness and villainy, and some not very nice things going on in the criminal underworld of London in 1893, making this one probably my darkest to date.
It will also be thrilling, I hope, and talking of thrilling… Here’s another list of over 100 titles for you that will interest you if you’re into thrillers and adventure novels. Click the banner, head to the page and have a free browse to see if there’s anything there you’d like to read while you wait for ‘A Case of Make Believe.’
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