Act I Wrap Up

(cover designs in progress - click to zoom in)

When I started posting Maladaptive on Inkitt last month, I had zero expectations. I had no idea what kind of a community I'd find, or if this story would find any kind of an audience. That wasn't the point, really. The point was just to get over this fear I had built up in my mind about sharing my writing again. Successfully posting chapters into a realm where someone might read them, or might not. Whatever the outcome, the point was just to do it, and get over the fear of being seen and the fear of not being seen, at the same time. It's a bitch of a problem to have as a writer. 

But people are reading it, and they are saying nice things. It does not have a massive following, but it's growing slowly, and honestly, that's the best I could have hoped for, and I'm grateful that a few people are taking the time to read the chapters, share their thoughts and their reactions. Now I just hope I don't disappoint them!

I suppose completing Act I deserves a bit of celebration, so I'm marking it with this little wrap up of the chapters posted so far, with any notes that I might have missed as I've blogged about the chapters.

Main Characters

In Act I we met our idiosyncratic protagonist, Cara Becker, and her affable husband Griffin on their adventure to see country music superstar River Deane in concert.

River Deane, in all his inspiring glory, stepped off the stage and into the plot to establish the inciting incident (ooh how authorly of me), thus changing Cara and Griffin’s plans.

The party at River’s house introduced us to his kind wife Naomi, his charismatic friend Styles Chilton, and Styles’ astonishingly confident wife Willow, who brought some complications along with them.

Pacing

During the initial word vomit draft of this story, I remember feeling like it was super action packed and fast moving, like I could barely keep up with it. But then when I started revising it, I realized it was a lot slower-paced than I had intended. That was something I had to reckon with and accept – that unless I wanted to make significant changes to the plot, this was going to be a slow burn of a story. I decided to go with it, and let it unfold the way it wanted to rather than force it to be something else, and leaned into the slow burn, hoping it would find an audience.

POV

As this story is told from Cara’s POV, there was a small problem of how to show some things that Cara was not present to witness. The prologue was important and it was originally in third-person omniscient perspective, not Cara’s POV, because she wasn’t there to see it. But given that the main story is told from Cara’s retrospective POV, I decided it might be jarring to start in third person and then switch to Cara for the rest of Act I in her voice. It’s really her story, after all, so I reframed the prologue to be something she imagined - one of her daydreams, instead of a flashforward.

Themes

Fate vs. luck, spontaneity, taking chances, seizing the moment – these are all recurring concepts mentioned by various characters throughout the first act. Griffin sees their adventure as something that’s “supposed” to happen, treating it as an opportunity to break out of their normal routine. He is essentially giving Cara the permission she needs to step out of her comfort zone and take a risk or two, which she’s strongly ambivalent about. It also raises the question of limits, and by the end of Act I, it should feel a bit like old boundaries have been stretched and have not yet found their new shape.

Spicy Scenes

Going back to my first draft again, initially I was planning on making the sex scenes hot. But I don’t have much experience writing spicy scenes, and it turns out, I can’t do it without making them funny. That’s just how they flowed out of me. I don’t know what that says about me, there’s probably a lot to psychoanalyze in that. But just like with the pacing, I decided to just go with the flow. And honestly, I really enjoyed writing them with humor – I find them satisfying. Sex can be lighthearted and funny, and I definitely think Cara’s personality leans toward a playful attitude toward sex and not taking it too seriously, so of course she would focus on the absurd aspects of sexual arousal and interactions, even in her fantasies.

But I am starting to read more spicy stories to help me build a voice for erotic content in the future.

Instructional Interludes

Throughout these chapters, I’ve tried to establish that Cara’s job as a technical writer has shaped the way she thinks about things. The instructional interludes (How to Catastrophize, How to Ruminate, etc.) are her way of articulating how her mind processes information and that she has a natural inclination to break things into steps  – even her dysregulated coping mechanisms. It's a pretty common technique for people with ADHD to break everyday tasks into steps in order to complete them, and so the fact that Cara writes instructions for a living says to me it's her way of helping to make the world more accessible. It brings order to her chaotic mind.

Storytelling Format

When I first started writing this, another way I considered structuring it was episodically, like a tv series. Once upon a time ago I studied professional screenwriting, so I have a decent knowledge of how to do that (if nothing else to show for it). If I were to break up Act I into episodes, I think Episode 1 spans the prologue to chapter 8 (everything leading up to the party), and episode 2 spans from chapter 9 to chapter 16 (the entire party). 

Maybe I’ll try that to see what they look like. For curiosity’s sake.

Finally, the image you see at the top of this post is a mosaic of potential book covers I've been working on. I was proud of the one I originally designed (the monochrome blue one with blue bars at the top and bottom) until I saw some of the eye-popping and super professional looking book covers on Inkitt, and then I started to feel like my cover was lacking. I've asked for some feedback on possible design options on Inkitt and have gotten some great feedback, but I'm still not sure which direction I want to go in. 

Maybe by the end of Act II I'll have a better feel for what works for the story.