Don’t agree to everything your agent says.
Soooooo… Last time I updated, my agent Suresh and I were talking about THE ENDING of my novel. And we talked for nearly two months about the bloody ending. For the first time, I just couldn’t accept the changes he wanted me to make, full stop.
Originally, I’d written a happy book about a woman who creates dreams and adopts an unloved child. Now looking at it: it’s got a diamond heist, nightmares and no happy family. But it’s so much more exciting! Diamonds! Nightmares! A bitter-sweet, good-feeling ending.
Except Suresh said it tied up ‘too neatly and too nicely’. Everything gets solved. “What if the protagonist was wrong about everything and there is no diamond?” Well, at first that sounded like a great plot twist, except if there’s no diamond then everything throughout the novel was a red herring and there’s no alternative crime.
Suresh suggested the crime should be tax-evasion. BORIIIIIING. No. *stamps foot* No. No. No. We’ve been through magical worlds of magic, we’ve been promised apprehending diamond thieves, and to turn around and say: time for tax evasion and a miserable ending would feel like, I think, slapping the reader.
I really tried to take on board his ideas and advice, which is why it took two months of agonising talks, but I just thought the suggested changes were…absolutely wrong. I colluded with Amanda Meuwissen, the lovely lady who agreed to edit my last draft, and she agreed with me that a diamond heist was way better.
Anyway, in the end, I wrote out a long proposal on everything that I felt could improve the ending but also why there should absolutely be a diamond heist. How it would be a let-down-ending to make the crime so mundane compared to the rest of the novel. I compared it to published books in magical realism that have taken the craziest scenario and been successful. I talked about audiences craving for superheros and high-octane dramas, just look at the box office.
Luckily my very, very long email was a success.
So now I’m beating my head against the desk as I research the Crown Court and how justice works if you’re prosecuting someone for diamond theft and your lead witness discovered it all in a dream.
Brb with a novel.
Willow H. Wood 