Suleyman Films

Happy Friday, folks!

Yet another week was consumed by our recent house-offer-purchase…thing. I’d say “us buying a house,” but technically, that hasn’t happened yet. Fun! We had our inspection, and it went A-Okay. There were some small things, but nothing that a trained professional or two can’t fix.

But in all this house hunting, offering, and buying, I managed to take a bit of a hiatus from my current writing project: a novel about a haunted library and a college student who makes some bad choices. That’s not to say I hadn’t been working on it (I have); it was more so every other day, I would write a little less than a thousand words and call it a day in addition to working on my short story revision and other fun stuff as outlined in my Revision, Revision, Revision post (which you can read here!).

But these last three days—shockingly, after our inspection and things were calming down, whoda thunk—I’ve been back in my groove. I’ve been cooking with almost two thousand words a day, which I’m satisfied with, but more importantly, I enjoy what I’m writing. It’s been fun making my character’s life worse with each page while helping him find a solution to the demon he’s battling. Less fun has been the revision process for my last draft, but it does let me cheat a bit and “write” even bigger chunks of the book at a time—guess who wrote more than two thousand words yesterday?

Usually, I like to think of my writing routine as starting the night before I do my writing. I’ll watch a horror movie or read some contemporary horror novel or a short story, and use that as my inspiration. I find mixing the two mediums to be the best approach. Horror movies are so moment-to-moment compared to most novels, and as a result, they provide better offerings in the form of scary scenes that I can borrow from (loosely, of course. I’m no thief). That’s how I feel about short stories, too. They’re quick and (usually) consist of one or two good scares/scenes, and I have an example of how something “worked.”

On the other hand, novels are an entirely separate, wordy, and drawn-out beast.

The last novel I read was Paul Tremblay’s 2015 horror-esque novel, A Head Full of Ghosts. I’d heard good things about the book and a ton of less-than-stellar things. After all, it’s the Internet Era, so everything is either 1 Star or 5 Stars (maybe 4 Star if someone doesn’t absolutely despise it). The story itself is pretty simple: Merry, a young girl, watches her family fall apart while a film crew documents her sister’s demonic possession. It’s one of those “man is the real monster” stories, with many hypotheticals until the bitter end. It has some good scares and some jarring use of a blogger’s breakdown of the story and TV show (man, bloggers are just the worst), but overall, I was glad I stuck with it. The novel takes place in the present day and the past, with some neat tricks thrown in with the narrator’s voice. Given the book’s structure, there is typically a distinction between who narrates the story (present or past Merry). One chapter will have present-day Merry talking to an interviewer while child Merry documents what happened to her family in semi-real time.

But that’s where it gets interesting. Adult Merry is the one telling the story here, not young Merry. Tremblay mixes a child’s voice and diction with the reflection of an adult. There are lots of areas where a child is clearly “talking” to the reader, but other times, it’s less clear how reliable the memories we’re reading are. And I liked that trick a lot. It gave me ideas for how to influence my characters’ voices in my writing and how to blend reflection and retelling while also learning when to do one or the other.

I typically write in the past tense without much in the way of tricks.

“That’s cool,” he said as he read the brilliantly written blog on his bright monitor.

I never jived well with present tense, both writing and reading—especially in the first person. I don’t know why. Maybe just because of what I’m used to? I’m all ears if you have any present-tense books (especially in the first person) that you love. But I digress. The nifty little trick A Head Full of Ghosts taught me is one that I’ll have to consider using in my later works.

For now, though, my umpteenth draft of my novel will stick to the past tense.

He leaned back in his chair, glad he decided not to make any more changes to the book.

I’m currently reading How to Sell a Haunted House, which is ironic given my current headspace, but it’s enjoyable and does some tricks of its own—even if the themes are a bit too close to…wait for it…home. Man, just how do I do it? I’m excited to wrap that book up and borrow some tricks for my own writing.

Until next time, keep on reading and writing. That’s my plan.