Rewriting Our First Lotherria Novel

HAHA what fun! I'm seven chapters, nearly 300 pages into my first Lotherrian novel "Red," and...I HAVE TO START ALL OVER AGAIN!!!

See, "Red" is a Dark Romantasy and a bit of a Monster F*cker story, since the main male character, Red, is a creature called a perymar. It's basically a humanized version of a peryton (A meat-eating flying deer). These creatures are considered both a race and also considered monsters, as they are confirmed maneaters (but primarily eat other meats). They have antlers, wings, deer legs, hooves, deer tail, deer ears, but their head and torso are otherwise human with big, sharp, teeth.

ANYWAY, since "Red" is a Dark Romantasy, I decided to tell it the same way I did my other Romance novels, which is first personal dual perspective.

It's not working. I am now stuck with a novel WIP with chapters that are super long, so much happening with the FMC that I just have so much stuff just STUFFED in each of her chapters. And I'm also stuck with a MMC that, for his two whole chapters, does nothing, says nothing, and just mentally narrates a bunch of word salad.

And don't think the FMC gets any better. There is so much info dump word salad for her too. In some ways, I've spent a good amount of time info dumping how Lotherria works without really saying much of anything at all. And it just feels like the story just STOPS being a story just so I can basically narrate information about things.

Now, I want people to KNOW this stuff but I can't think of a way to really tell it in this format without STUFFING it in as an info dump word salad. There is so much TELL and not enough SHOW, and I don't feel that the format I've chosen is allowing me to freely and organically really tell the story I want to tell.

It normally works for my romances, because we ARE focused on just two characters doing their own things. But, in this story, Lotherria is a big world full of so much stuff. This story in and of itself has a LOT of backstories in it that could utilize flashbacks but, with the format, can't really do them without coming off too janky.

In other words...this just isn't working and, as much as I love the characters, I hate everything about how the story is being told, as it just feels like Info Dump: The Novel with some sex talk sprinkled in. I hate it.

SO, now I have to start the story ALL OVER AGAIN, because if the romance format didn't work, then I decided it was time to try the Fantasy format I use for my non-romance books. And that's third person omniscient. I know everything that needs to be said. The characters only know what they need to know, rather than having a bunch of info force-fed to them just because I want readers to know another character's traumatic backstory, but the character has only just formerly met the FMC a couple hours before. Yeah, real mess.

So, with the new format, I'm hoping I can RELAX and just let the story unfold naturally and approach all these info bits a little more organically and allow a lot more SHOW rather than tell. I can utilize switching to the thoughts and feelings of other characters other than ONLY the two MCs. So, now I have access to organic flashbacks of multiple characters and a more relaxed form of storytelling.

I'm having trouble making my mark in Romance. I love my Romance stories and I really wish people would give them a chance. However, they are not as flowery as my Dark Fantasy and Fantasy novels. While I try to be descriptive, it is more about character-driven stuff focused primarily on just two people and their thoughts and actions. With my Dark Fantasy/Fantasy stuff, it's not just two people even if the MCs are primarily just two people. The whole world of the novel is an experience. Rather than just following along with the relationship of just two people, you're now enveloped in the whole world happening around you and you get to follow along with the characters in a more relaxed format.

People that have read my Dark Fantasy/Fantasy work seem to love it and I've often been told that it feels like a movie being played out, but also that the readers have said that they feel like they are THERE and the story is happening around them.

So, this is going to be an interesting experiment. With this format, I'm also hoping to maybe confuse the reader as to not fully knowing who the FMC ends up with, whereas, with a first-person dual perspective, it's too obvious. I want to let the story have some angst, feel like there are some serious stakes for the FMC if not SEVERAL characters. The story focuses on a community, so why not let the community help tell the story.

It's tedious and it kinda sucks that things turned out the way they did. BUT I'm not angry about having to restart the story from the beginning. It would have needed a massive chopping edit job anyway, so this just gives me a chance to clean it up easier and actually get back into my Dark Fantasy roots. I know this story can be told better. I know that I can introduce Lotherria to readers in a better way. I also need to friggin RELAX as an author. For certain projects, I just get so paranoid about certain things and it ruins the experience when those things come up. So, I think this might help and allow things to go at a better pace.

I want readers to ENJOY "Red" and enjoy the world of Lotherria. But, as the author, I really want to have an enjoyable experience WRITING it. I like these characters, and I really want them to shine better.

Anyway, that was my little rant, but I just wanted to share my little conundrum that my partner and I really had to sit down and discuss to fix. So...off I go to start the story over. Wish me luck with the new format.

-- Ravyn Karasu