Novel Progress

Just to keep you up to speed on my attempt to write my novel, and so I can keep focused, I have included a little progress box on the menu down the right-hand side. So far I'm about 20% through my initial adaptation of the screenplay, and I am aiming to have this at least done by December. I've adapted about 24 out of 113 pages of the screenplay - about 11,000 words in all. Given that this is just the first pass, the word count isn't too bad. Obviously a writer should be aiming to tell a story in as many words as it takes to tell that story. Err, yeah that made sense. Generally it is recommended that a novel be somewhere between 80,000 to 120,000 words... but I'm not too worried about this target at the moment, I'm sure the story will fit comfortably within that predefined limit. Getting the initial story on paper is the first step. Getting the thing published is at the very end of the Yellow Brick Road - just before I bitchslap the Wizard.

September Status Report

I've decided to put aside some of the short fiction I've been working on over the last couple of months and I'm going to take a crack at working on a novel. Every man and their dog thinks that they have a novel in them, but I'm under no allusions that this will be a long, unforgiving journey. Hell, I may not ever get around to finishing it, but I'm going to give it a shot. I'm somewhat of a realist as you would well be aware.

Fortunately I don't have to worry too much about sitting down and plotting-out the storylines and characters - I already have it all on paper. It's been sitting here for a few years. I've decided that my first attempt at a novel will involve a story adapted from my first (and favourite) screenplay. Yes, I'm taking the unusual approach of adapting a screenplay into a novel. Usually it's the other way around, a writer struggling to condense a 50000+ word novel into a 120 minute screenplay. Stripping away important character development etc. The great thing about turning a screenplay into a novel is the amount of freedom that you have to develop what were essentially two-dimensional characters, and unresolved plotlines that may have initially been stripped in a screenplay. It's actually quite liberating as a writer.

I won't give away too much of the initial plot, but I'd like to think of it as 'Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels' and 'Snatch' meets Chopper Read. It's essentially a dark crime comedy set in the world of bungling Australian criminals. A world where a criminals mouth is often faster than their brain... or their trigger finger.

Given the nature of the story, I've decided that I am going to retain a lot of the snappy, disjointed nature of the screenplay in the style of the novel. Play a little with the conventions of your standard story. A novel for the A.D.D. generation.

With my current work commitments, I'm probably adapting about ten pages of the screenplay each week. If I were to extrapolate that across the entire length of the screenplay, I'm probably looking at around ten to twelve weeks to get a very rough draft together. A *very* rough draft. Once that's down, I'm probably going to have to go through it and rewrite the majority of the rough draft. Ever so much fun. I’m aiming at hopefully get the rough draft done by the end of the year… with an improved rewrite by about March next year - although I’m not counting my chickens before they hatch. I may just get sick of it before then.

I'll let you know how my progress goes - good or bad. In the meantime I'm still waiting on some sort of response regarding 'Re-entry' and 'hemodialysis'. Part of me wants 'Re-entry' to get rejected... I'd love to tackle that story as my next novel (assuming the first one ever gets off the ground).

Hopefully I can get a few more short fiction stories published before the end of the year.

Rock out with your cock out!