The Growth Of An Author

 Originally posted on September 12, 2020 at https://ailovestogrow.wixsite.com/mysite/post/the-growth-of-an-author

Really great authors are able to do more with less. I think Edgar Allen Poe is the best example of this, but most great writers have their own examples. I'm not yet that great. In fact, I'm like the Andy Warhol of expansion smut, filling my porny novels with pop references to establish a connection between the reader and the characters as they orgasm. The only significant difference I have between myself and every other author of this niche within a niche is my editor is very good and my books are very long.

However, back to my original thought, unless a person is a great author, as authors write they create better literature by becoming more descriptive. A painter adds detail through finer brush strokes, but a writer adds detail with more words. Great writers add more detail with better words, but I'm not there yet.

What I'm getting at is Book 2's outline started with as much story and smut as Book 1 when I wrote out the outline. Each chapter had some details and some openness to add a touch or two, but generally I had it planned out to be probably only a little longer than Book 1. As I've done a few rereadings of chapters in the past couple of months, I've realized that while my chapters have gotten longer, the pacing actually feels rushed. There are some places where the events are moving at breakneck speed and the chapter is actually twice as long as Book 1 chapter length.

I know what's happening, and if you've been following what I'm saying with this post, you've got it as well. Book 2 has a significant upgrade in the detailed descriptions in the prose and while that isn't a bad thing, it has brought on some unintentional side effects, namely pushing me to ignore some important characters.

Without going into too much detail, the running impetus for Book 2 is a large wedding ceremony. Family for all the girls (which number 10 at the moment) are coming to stay at Casa Padmava. That means for about 2/3s of the book, there are hundreds of other characters running around and some of them are important for the primary and secondary plotlines. In my original outline, I made sure to give many of them introductions and a few scenes to become familiar so their plot points didn't feel jarring.

Then I started to write. As I got further and further into the chapters, I was finding it hard to cram everything I needed to describe into the allotted time for each chapter. That meant while I was adding more details into the story, I was feeling I had to maintain certain pacing and word counts, making me choose between a bloated scene that was vital to the story or a quick sentence or two to introduce someone. Over the past few months, I found myself cutting more and more of these important little tidbits because of my own inability to use better descriptions.

Sometimes this worked out for the better, like my abbreviated joke in Chapter 6 I've talked about before and even previewed in a previous post. However, I think my OCD has dictated this story for long enough and it is time I go back and fix this problem. The next couple of chapters are vital and they need these characters introduced and proper time given to them so the climax of the story doesn't feel like it is just throwing a bunch of names at y'all without context.

For the last week I've been doing a major overhaul of the written chapters and I'll probably be doing it for a few more weeks. I'm ignoring chapter length and inserting the pieces where I believe they'll fit best. Then, to bring chapter length back under control, I'll be reorganizing and changing the chapter numbering. I'm naming them 5.1, 5.2 for right now, so the "end" of the book will still be Chapter 33 and I'm still at the end of Chapter 27, but the finished book may have as many as 40 chapters.

Why not finish the draft first then go back and do this?

I realized this problem and stopped everything to look at it because I've reached a critical point in the story where all these characters needed to act and work out their parts for the end of the story. Essentially, I was about to write about some of these characters and I need to have gone through their introductions to get a feel for who these characters are and what kind of quirks they bring to the story.

A great example of this is Chanise, Honoka's cousin. She's referenced a few times in Book 1, but we meet her for the first time in Book 2. In Book 1, all I knew about Chanise was she was like one of my cousins who loves to shop and dress up and has zero boundaries when it comes to personal space. As a reference tool, Chanise is able to let the audience know that Honoka doesn't care for fashion and clothing because Chanise is the yardstick that Honoka compares herself to. In Book 2, I found I wanted to explore that relationship more and suddenly I have a paragraph describing how they were close when the girls were younger, Chanise often using Honoka as a dressup doll and the underlying reason Honoka hasn't gone back to that close relationship is her Change was deeply rooted in shame and she pushed all her family away.

See, that's great character development, and I wouldn't have gotten there unless I wrote it out. It wasn't long, a short paragraph was all I needed, but I NEEDED that paragraph to know how Chanise would act in future scenes. I need about a dozen more of these moments before I can move forward with the story because I need to know how all these characters are going to interact with one another.

So this all had to happen. If I were a better writer, I would have finished the first draft and all this would be draft 2 or 3 work. Instead, I'm going back now because my story isn't just rough, it is missing pieces that I need to be able to finish. Sorry if this seems daft and weird, but this is my process. I also think y'all probably don't care how I write your smut, you just want more smut, but I don't know of any other way to do it. I did all this for Book 1, I just didn't have a blog at the time so just trust me, this is how I do things and I hope it creates something at least partially as entertaining as Book 1.

Thanks radiated towards Chad Denkhoff at GoodReads for the stars! Wow, Becoming Monsters got a higher rating from him than Mask Of The Template, a book I really like. I'm flattered and double thank you! It means a lot when people show as much or more love to BM as to other big time authors. Makes me feel like I'm in the big leagues! Also a big warm hug to all those participating with my polls over at http://www.process-productions.com/forum/search.php?searchid=2416766 . I find that little science experiment to be absolutely fascinating and I hope many others will join in the fun.

Keep harmonizing!!

#ailovestogrow #morelikeapollockpainting #morererwitestocum #tangentanyonereadingannabellehawthornebecauseIonlyreadthefirstbookbutnowImfindingshehaslike4booksworthandwaswonderingifitstayedthesameorgotbetter