A Writer's Tale

In my previous attempt, I began the story with the girl asking her former boyfriend for a favor, then taking him to her house and showing him the body of a man she has been killed. He is dead on the floor with a stake in his chest. She tells her old friend that the guy is a vampire, that she needs help in disposing of the body, etc.

As I wrote the first chapter, however, I realized that the story seemed to lie there, dead as a carp.

It had no zip, no “forward narrative thrust.”

I decided not to continue writing it, and went on to look for a better idea.

This sort of thing happens with some frequency.

Many times, I embark on a new novel, then quit. Why? Most often, it is because the story doesn’t seem to be going anyplace. I have a certain standard inside my head. It isn’t well defined, but I get a sense of when things are going well and when they aren’t. If a story does have a problem, I’d rather quit sooner than later.

But I save everything.

Because, just as I’ve quit certain projects, I have eventually returned to many of them and brought them (in one form or another) to completion.

If you’re a writer, be sure to keep track of your older stuff, the notes and chapters of unfinished novels, the manuscripts that you completed but which never sold everything.

You may find uses for them.

More often than not, when I start considering ideas for my next novel, I think about some of my earlier attempts. “What about giving that one another try?”

Usually, when a story doesn’t seem to be working, there is a very specific reason for it.

The reason isn’t always easy to recognize, especially during the first try. By the time you take another look at the idea, months or years later, the problem and solution may be obvious to you.

In the case of Bite, I decided to give it another whirl because I really liked the basic idea. I needed a way to give it some energy and forward movement, but I still wasn’t sure how.

That’s why I made extensive notes about possible ways to go with the plot.

Eventually, as I made the notes, I discovered the specific problem with my earlier version: at the beginning, the “vampire” was already dead on the floor with a stake in its chest.

The easy fix?

This time, write it so the vampire hasn’t already been dispatched. The girl won’t ask her old boyfriend for help in disposing of the body she’ll ask him to kill the vampire for her.

And that made all the difference.

Suddenly, Bite was off and running.

In fact, it ran away with itself. By the time I’d finished making my notes on October 17, I’d written seven pages (single spaced) and developed a very involved plot. As I wrote the book following my general ideas for the plot one thing led to another. I followed where they led. Eventually, it became obvious that I couldn’t do Bite the way I’d planned.

If I followed my notes and allowed the story to develop in the full way that seemed appropriate, it would be over a thousand pages long.

I wasn’t ready for that, and neither was my publisher.

(For one thing, I had a deadline that wouldn’t allow me to spend so much extra time on a novel.)

As a result, I had to choose between developing the story properly or following my intended plot to the end of the line. I couldn’t do both.

I chose to dump the second half of the plot.

Under the circumstances, that involved little more than not continuing the story after my main characters disposed of the vampire’s body.

I don’t think I’ll tell, here, what I had planned for the second half of the book. Because maybe someday I’ll want to use that plot. Maybe I won’t. But it’s never a good idea to shut off options by giving away a story that might come in handy someday.

A few little asides about Bite.

Ann asked me to name the vampire Elliot. I don’t know why.

I’d already given him another name, but she wanted Elliot. So I changed the vampire’s name. It’s easy to do with a computer.

Perhaps to reward me for letting her choose the vampire’s name, she suggested a weekend trip in which we followed the exact route that my characters take in Bite. The trip allowed me to take extensive notes about details of the areas. The notes came in very handy. The book would’ve been quite different if we hadn’t taken that trip.

My outlaw biker would’ve looked quite different if I hadn’t known Del Howison. I needed to come up with something unusual about the character’s physical appearance, and decided to give him long, flowing white hair like Del. I then named the character Snow White.

Del and his wife, Sue, are the owners of wonderful shop of horrors (including books) called Dark Delicacies. The resemblance between Snow White and Del stops with the hair. Del is a terrific, friendly guy. To the best of my knowledge, he’s not a homosexual pederast or a murderer.

Two months into the writing of Bite, I took time off to prepare my first Headline short fiction collection, Fiends.

I spent about one month on Fiends, then returned to Bite and finished it on May 1, 1996.