Over the course of six or seven years myself and a friend wrote a novel which topped out at about 106000 words.  Now I think at the time we both knew that it was rubbish.  Now this was the first thing that either myself or my co-writer had ever written and boy did we blunder along.  I’ll ignore the things technical and geological problems (where the novel was set etc.)  Many of our characters were carbon copies of each other.  We had far too many as well.  There was no idea of how to build up these characters either.  Our main two characters did not have any real growth in them and were rather two-dimensional.

Although I still believe that the plot is very good and has a great deal of potential neither of us had the skill or experience to make it work.  The writing itself was hideous but the content was nowhere near good enough.  I could not even find a way to research where the information would sink into my head. Even some of our ideas were just plain crap and barely thought through.  We were planning a trilogy as well as a pre call novel and leaving little bits in the story for the next two installments.  I had cast who would play who in the movie version and hoped that Bryan Singer or Ridley Scott would direct it and you get the picture.

Now though I have written almost ten short stories and as I’ve written them I’ve learnt how to build a story and characters.  I’ve discovered how to allow them to grow and let a plot grow on itself.  I’m not really a planner.  I’ve never been able to bullet point the stages of what I was working on.  Since I’ve been focussing on short stories I’ve found that their lengths have gone from under two thousand words to pushing nine thousand words.  I’m not sure if that still counts as A short story though.

I did not realise until I had started short stories that I needed to write them as it has taught me how to write.  I did not know what I was doing at all, I still don’t to a certain extent but I feel I am ready to look at the novel again.  It’s existence has slowly been eating into my consciousness.  We had always intended to rewrite it one day and for me that day is coming. The two main characters have a lot more definition within my head.  I can see them clearer.  I have a broader idea of how I want this word that we have created to look and hopefully feel.  Support characters are beginning to take a little life of their own now.  The plot needs work but the ending I still believe is solid.  We just need to get there.  Watch for updates.