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Three Strikes and You're In This page is dedicated to taking you inside the writing process of Three Strikes and You're In. I'll be posting my progress here, as well as talking about how the novel develops. I'll let you know what I'm thinking, and why I decide to make certain changes. The idea is to give you insight into how I'm writing this particular novel. If you've got thoughts on the book or anything I write about it here, I'd love to hear them. Shoot me an e-mail at john@johnphythyon.com and let me know what you think. Leaner, Meaner, Better (9/23/2005) Here I am again: at the end of another draft. I've now completed the fourth draft of Three Strikes and You're In. It's a very different book from that first draft I began almost a year ago. I've cut 10,000 words out of the book between the third and fourth drafts. It's now 82,000 words, down from 92k. As a result, it's a much leaner novel, and that's good. You get into the action sooner, the tension is ratcheted up quicker, and I think it is more of a page-turner now. From that first draft, I think I've cut somewhere between 15- and 20,000 words. There was a lot of extraneous material in there that was slowing things down and getting in the way. That's been the most educational aspect of writing this novel. I knew that you had to cut and craft from your first draft to your final one, but it wasn't until going through the process this time that I really understood just how to identify passages that didn't add anything and get rid of them. That's a result of putting the book through criticism in a way I've never done before. More people have read drafts of Three Strikes and You're In than my previous novels. All of them had criticism. Much of it was excellent. I learned, through putting the novel through the workshop exercise of having a book club read it and through listening carefully to advice from agents and editors at a writer's conference, what worked, what didn't, and how I could improve the book. It's also meaner. The ghost is now much more sinister, much crueller, and more insane than he was in any of the previous drafts. He's an epic villain that the reader should love to hate.His ultimate plan for revenge is nastier and more horrifying than I previously envisioned. That too came about as a result of reader advice. I'm hopeful that, when the Big Reveal occurs, the reader's skin crawls. This has the byproduct of making Al's actualization more sincere and better earned. I'm much more satisfied with the climax now than I was before, and I think readers will be too. All of this makes it a better novel. I was happy with it before, but I'm very proud of what I've been able to accomplish in this draft. Crafting this book through several drafts has been tremendously rewarding. I feel like I'm a better writer, and I've got a book that was not only fun to write but also pleasureable to edit. The process I've gone through in the last year is one of the best I've ever experienced as a writer. I've updated the excerpt on the web site, so if you read it before, I encourage you to check it out again. I think you'll like the new beginning. The next step is to begin seriously courting agents. I may write a column about that next. We'll see. Until then, thanks for coming along on the ride with me. It's been a treat to write these columns and share the process with you. This won't be the final entry, of course. For now, though, I'm going to focus on doing the work to get an agent. I'll let you know when there's more to report.
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