Do Not Try This At Home
I will, Monday (I hope), print out my latest Red Dress Ink title, Freudian Slip. It has been the manuscript I had the most fun with in a long time, one that made me laugh out loud in spots, or get excited and smirk to myself. BUT . . . it was one of those novels with a great concept, that only when I was 150 pages into it did I realize I gave myself a narrative structure and a central conceit that would be hard to pull off. Insanely hard.
It was 150 pages in when I realized I had to have a woman fall in love with a disembodied voice who took up residence in her apartment. A voice. And she has to believe the voice is her soul mate. And the reader has to believe she would give up all for this angel in her house.
Have you ever done that? Come up with a cool concept only to realize you really f***ed yourself because it's NOT going to be easy to pull off? I hate when that happens. The end result is worth it. But I've made my life a writing hell. And I have the dark circles to prove it.
Do not try this at home.
Anyone else have a story they really screwed themselves over with? Do share! Misery loves company.
It was 150 pages in when I realized I had to have a woman fall in love with a disembodied voice who took up residence in her apartment. A voice. And she has to believe the voice is her soul mate. And the reader has to believe she would give up all for this angel in her house.
Have you ever done that? Come up with a cool concept only to realize you really f***ed yourself because it's NOT going to be easy to pull off? I hate when that happens. The end result is worth it. But I've made my life a writing hell. And I have the dark circles to prove it.
Do not try this at home.
Anyone else have a story they really screwed themselves over with? Do share! Misery loves company.
posted by Erica Orloff at 7:05 PM
12 Comments:
Certainly not with such a great idea! That is such a cool idea, that I'm not even feeling sorry for you about those 150 pages. ;-)
What a fun idea! That must have been an exhilarating!
Hi Spy:
My hero is stuck between heaven and hell . . . and falls in love with my heroine, who is grieving the loss of her father. She hears his voice as a sort of "Freudian Slip" (hence the title), until the voice becomes very separate from her and she falls in love. But . . . the narrative structure requires that when he's in her head, his thought is the last sentence of her chapter and then begins HIS chapter. It has driven me insane. Plus I used italics when he's in her head, but quotation marks when he speaks in his own chapter. It all works . . . but at times my brain hurt. LOL!!!! Anyway, thanks . . . it was very fun. Torturous but fun!
E
It does sound like a marvelous story, Erica. Can't wait to read it!
Stephen King did something similar in Dreamcatcher, where an alien invades a character's mind (it's a huge book, and this happens, if I remember correctly, in the last 1/3). Very tough. My hat's off to you guys; I don't think I could pull it off.
I scrapped my first novel because the plot became driven by too many contrivances and coincidences. If something wasn't working, I'd throw in an element to MAKE it work. It was a valuable learning experience, though, and I might end up returning to the MC in that book some day.
Jude:
Put it this way. I am glad this is like my 20th novel and not my first or I would have panicked.
E
The plot sounds an awful lot like Just Like Heaven. In that movie a man mourning his dead wife moves into an apartment haunted by it's last owner. They fall in love and he finds out she not really dead but in a coma. He finds her, saves her life, loses her, gets her back...soul mates forever.
What happens when story lines are so similar? Do you let your agent/publisher worry about it? What do you do?
bbbound:
I pitched my book before that movie was ever made (which is actually based on a French book, if I recall correctly). In any case, because I am doing a "quick" summation here, it's really much different. Mine has demons in it and Albert Einstein running an area of heaven. It's a lot quirkier (which I think you can get away with in a book more than a movie). More Neil Gaimain-ish.
But yes, it's always a concern. That's one reason I don't read fiction and stick to physics texts--no chance of copying writing style or plot points there! In general, I think if it happened that it was SUPER similar, an editor might encourage you to adjust . . . or sometimes not. You can often see books with similar subject matter come out on the heels of each other. My book is a 2008--plenty of time for any thoughts of that movie to fade. And, like I said, it is really different at its root.
But, you know, Gossip Girls is a good example. It comes out, it's a hit. You know how many books now seem like knock-offs of it? Or The Nanny Diaries? A lot of times, though, they're books the other other authors had been working on and now the climate to buy it is hot. Nature of the biz.
E
My current WIP features a psychic medium who experiences visions. I had NO idea how depicting visions could come across as dreaded flashbacks. Argh. BUT, I'm tweaking it, shortening the vision episodes, focusing on the action in the visions, and limiting the number of them. What a challenge.
Erica, I can't wait to read Freudian Slip!
kathy:
I have a psychic in my next Nocturne. She "reads" people, and I definitely worked hard to make it seem real--like fragmented pieces of reality she has to intuit how to read all together. Not easy, so I definitely commiserate with you!
E
Oh. My. Gosh! Did you say Einstein!?! I want it now! Please, please, please?
Seriously Erica. I love that. It's right up my alley.
Like you, I don't read much fiction, but devour science rags. (I knew I liked you.)
Re: bbbound's comment: It's a little frustrating when you have a super original idea and then you find someone else has something different, but similar enough for people to think you copied when it's the furthest thing from it.
In fact, I just told Mary about a new idea I had and she and I both agreed that there would be comparisons to Just Like Heaven too.
It's nothing like it. And it's nothing like yours. But I can see where people would draw comparisons.
And the one I'm working on now. The query was read to a room of about 100 authors/unpubbeds and a NY editor.
The editor loved it and thought it was really different. And without fail, everyone remarked on how original it was.
Then like two months later, I saw a promo for a movie on Sci Fi with some similar specifics.
(Beating my head against keyboard.)
Again, my story's way different, but I'm sure if it gets pubbed, someone somewhere will think I stole it. Whatever...
Oh...and yes, it has a few elements that were kicking my ass. It's nice to see I'm not the only one. Thanks for posting this.
:) d
PS I haven't read Gaimon, but I'm seeing his name all over the place lately. What's the deal?
Dana:
I forgot we have that Einstein thing in common. In mine, God is a woman, and Einstein is hell-bent on figuring out her universe--and when he wants to talk about something and doesn't want God to hear him, he plays ABBA, which apparently lets angels and demons speak without fear of God hearing since she hates ABBA. ;-)
As for original ideas. You know it's ALL been done before. I think yes, there are some plots that make you stand in awe at how original they are, but in general, many things feed off each other in the ethers of the universe. You just have to write your best book and make it be unique and be damned with the rest of it.
E
P.S. Gaiman . . . I'd start with American Gods or Good Omens. He's very subversive. You'll love him.
'Freudian Slip' sounds like a fun book! Especially with Einstein and a God who hates ABBA. LOL
I dropped an idea for a book that I thought was a winner. It was a romantic suspense, and that's not a subgenre that fits me. I'm much better at writng about relationships.
edie:
Knowing our own strengths is so important. I can write funny, but I can't write themeless. It has to be funny with an end game in mind. Thus I'd make a terrible stand-up comic. :-) I can't tell a joke.
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