As I opened up my document for Handyman Vol. 3, I paused to think about some feedback I got from someone in my critique group last week. She said that everything up to this point was more or less “expected.” Not that she knew what was precisely happening in the story, but that there were no real surprises. The story was simply progressing forward toward the inevitable. And I’ve been stewing on that feedback, letting it simmer to see if the soup of this story might taste better (that was a super lame metaphor. Haha. Brace yourself for more).
And as I was there smelling all the lovely flavors and imagining what it might taste like, I realized that my interesting soup was more like butternut soup. It’s tasty, but kinda boring in flavor. There’s no zang or zip to it, especially if you blend it all together and it’s like to consistency of bad diarrhea (that same critique session, someone else said that I like poop jokes too much, like a small child/teenager. I didn’t stew so much on that feedback. Haha). Seriously, I’m not a fan of blended soups.
Anyway, I was reminded of the tried and true way to write good stories: Go BIG. Just frickin’ throw a wrench into the story that propels your characters into a huge mess. It was tempting, but I wasn’t ready to go to such extremes, so I toned down the advice and went for the next best thing: allude to a new danger, make a promise to the reader that something big will going down.
I have this whole story mostly planned out, and now I’ve had to think about how this new twist fits into it. But overall, I think it’s gonna work just fine. What can I do with it to get creative? At what point is the idea awesome, and at what point is it just too much for the story I’m telling? I’ll have to find that balance later.
For now, I’ve gotta get Paul out of one mess, so he can stumble into another, and bad soup’s gonna hit the fan. After more feedback, who knows, maybe I’ll throw a bunch out in a rewrite. You never know. Early feedback from Vol. 2 resulted in a substantial change to the end of that book, to what it is now. Maybe feedback on this story will force my hand into introducing aliens, and Paul is abducted and forced to live a life on a paradise planet. Or everyone just turns into cheese. How’s that for a plot twist?
Anyway, I’m about 17,000 words into book three. Book two was just shy of 60,000, for a comparison. And here I am writing an update instead of writing the book!
