the mother of all tweaks

For a while now I've been working on and off on my first proper novel, Man in the Loop (MitL).

The central core of the novel is sort of about existentialism. The basic idea is that the main character is actually a "brain in a jar" who's plugged into a computer world.

He doesn't know he's a brain in a jar (well, maybe at the end) but the real thing he doesn't know is that actually when he was a proper human he was a serial killer. The idea was that in order to have this man in the loop system, the government has to use psychos because their brains work differently.

The MitL system was designed as essentially an Unmanned Vehicle (in this case planes) with an operator 'in the loop' but not actually on-board. But normal people couldn't operate it properly so they end up using serial killers who have been executed by the state.

So it's also about morality - you've got the US government who are supposedly all "democracy and freedom" using people against their will who they've actually put to death. The US is embroiled in a huge war in the middle east that covers the entire region and represents an escalation of the 'war on terror', but is also really a resource grab. They've had to use things like MitL to 'get the job done', as it were.

To juxtapose this, I had a female terrorist whose entire family had been killed when the Americans had mistakenly bombed her village. The idea was she would be responsible for bombing the MitL facility.

The idea also was to tell her story in reverse, where the other story would be forwards. So at the beginning she seems to be the bad guy, he the good, whereas by the end you realise it's more the other way around.

I've been working away on this for ages now and have loads of it written, but I've been struggling a bit and skirting around some of the difficult bits (meaning dodgy story elements) and I've kinda realised that there's a much better way for me to tell the story.

Essentially I can instead contrast the MitL guy's story against his original capture. In other words, it can be a detective story 'with a twist'. I could have the MitL man seeing what seems to be another person but is actually himself as a serial killer "leaking" into his own computer world. At the same time, the other thread could be the detectives tracking him down.

The problem is that it means totally abandoning at least two thirds of what I've written. It's a lot stronger and simpler way of doing things, though, and won't involve quite so many dodgy stuff.

A lot of what I've written is kinda comic-booky. I mean some of the characters almost have moments where they go "Muhahahaha" in a maniacal laugh stylee :/. But it was the only way I could think of bridging between the plot strands. Plus the terrorst is kinda cheesey.

I guess I need to bite the bullet.