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Writing Project Update

I don't have any numbers for you this time, I will next time though.

I do have a pretty dramatic (okay, maybe not dramatic to you) update about my project.  When I was writing that short post about horror subgenres I mentioned that my current piece is mostly apocolyptic horror with a sprinkle of occult horror mixed in.

Well, my biggest struggle with my project has been that I haven't thought that it was scary enough, or scary at all.  And I think that is because I was writing within a subgenre that I don't think is all that scary.  Apocolyptic horror doesn't really scare me.  Occult horror definitely does.  So, I have decided to make a tonal shift.  I am going to make my novel an occult horror with some themes of apocolyptic horror sprinkled in.  The world isn't going to end, but the world as my characters know it, will, and this will be at the hand of a cult like entity.  This also allows for the slight supernatural elements of my story to be scarier and less out of place, and for my main supernatural character to be...spookier.

I think I was trying to be too...commercial? I dunno.  I know that what I was writing just wasn't 100% me.  I was proud of all the work I put into my outline, and I like my characters, and where the story takes place, but I am also glad that I made this realization and I allowed myself to think "Wait, this isn't really what I want to write" without either scrapping the project all together (which is what I usually do) or forcing myself to write it just because its how my outline was. Ultimately, the bigger parts of my plot are still there, but a massive tonal shift will be taking place.

I am very glad that I realized this in Act I and not...like...Act III.  This does mean though, that editing Act I is gonna double (maybe triple) in workload, but that's okay.

Originally, according to my previous outline, Act I was gonna be 8 chapters, but I am reducing that to 7 (for now) because my previous chapter 7 is just not gonna fit the new tone at all, and I don't want to write a chapter that will ultimately get cut.  So I have 1 more chapter to write before Act I is over, which is suuuper exciting to me.

I'm also cutting out some other things that I've forced into my story, but ultimately feel forced and cliche, and won't really change the plot of the story much at all.  So, I think I can finish Act I this weekend, which will leave all of November for me to walk away from it, work on something else, and then be able to come back to it in December and start making those changes that I want to make. I want to step away for a month because it will allow me to sort of forget my project and I can come back to it with a more critical eye.

I won't talk about my 2017 writing goals just yet, but I'm really excited for 2017 overall.
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