Let’s Write a Book! | Part VI: Motivation

“What’s my motivation?”

It’s been three months since our last update.
The book is steadily progressing.

Current chapter count: 11
Current word count: 16,522

Let’s talk about some concepts

Plot. Characters. Dialogue. Tension.
I knew about these things before I started this book-writing journey.

Promises. Progress. Payoff.
I was vaguely aware of these from a life of consuming too many films and TV shows — mainly when I saw things going wrong.

• Whatever happened to the Russian in the Pine Barrens episode of The Sopranos? — unfulfilled promise.
• Why was Daenerys Targaryen’s heel turn so jarring? – bad progress
• Why is Broken Bran now king of Westeros? — bad payoff.

Goals. Motivation. Conflict.

Again, a relatively new concept for me to execute.

• Why is Luke Skywalker fighting Darth Vader? — daddy issues.
• Why is Olive obsessed with winning Little Miss Sunshine? — because she’s a child.
• Why does Drake keep sending for Kendrick Lamar? — unclear motivation; audience losing interest.

“Why” is the big question to answer for every character. Once this is established, it makes the job easier.

In theory.

Somehow, I need to synthesise all these elements together, involve multiple storylines for everyone, and make it interesting enough for the reader not to get bored.

Difficult.

Nevertheless, there’s a serviceable start to the book:

Man and woman meet under the romantic strobe lights of a generic Daegu nightclub at 4 a.m. We’ve promised that they’re single and horny, and that this relationship is the central focus of the book.

I want to touch on thorny issues like feminism, race, and the foreigner experience in modern South Korea. Plutonium in the wrong hands. There are also a couple of limp stabs at humour to keep things from getting too heavy.

I am coming towards the tail end of the first act, which is an achievement.

Recently, I was horrendously stuck with where to go next. My main character, Isaac, didn’t work. He’s based on the listless drifter version of myself from that weird post-school time when people expect you to have things going on in your life besides PlayStation and drinking. I did not.

His romance with Minji didn’t work. I’m proud of the background I did for her, hoping to create a positive, three-dimensional female character. The problem was that it wasn’t immediately obvious why she would be interested in a loser like Isaac. So I had to go back to basics and figure him out. I believe the romance and chemistry read better now, but we can always fix it in post.

I also spent about a month redrafting my opening chapters — which is pointless because I always hate reading what I’ve written. I will have to re-re-draft when I complete the book and will likely make wholesale changes once again.

I’m hoping that my first act is relatively strong.

I have four more chapters to complete before we have a big time skip, and we can observe the conflicts which occur during the middle stages of their relationship.

The grind continues…

The journey so far:

Let’s Write a Book! | Part I: Optimism
Let’s Write a Book! | Part II: Planning
Let’s Write a Book! | Part III: Action
Let’s Write a Book! | Part IV: Inspiration
Let’s Write a Book! | Part V: Middles