Punk Tooth a Novel by Delany Burk
Senior Project for UNRLT 2022
This novel has been in the works for a few years. I needed to incorporate it into my school schedule to put some meaningful work into it and hopefully prepare a decent draft to send to publishers by the end of my time in college. This project has allowed that.
To begin this project, I knew I needed to focus my editing on grammar first and foremost. In a grammar class in spring semester of 2022, I prepared an editing and grammar toolkit to use when I edit my work, beginning with commas and punctuation and spanning down to things like word choice. This guide became the basis for my grammatical edits on this project.
As I worked on my grammatical edits and re-read my novel for the first time, I found that there were discrepancies in the timeline, many plot holes, and places where I needed to add more scenes or details.
When I began editing this novel was 186 pages long. Now, at the end of this project, it is over 200 pages long.
Below you can see the grammar editing guide I used for this project, as well as some sample readings of the project before, during and after editing.
Why This Project
This Project was guided by a few different ideas. Originally it was born when I was given the prompt to write a monster story where monstrosity is not the main focus.
However, as this project developed it was clear that monstrosity did need to be the center point, just not the obvious monstrosity. Instead, it became more about how monstrous the music industry can be and, specifically, how predatory and dangerous the midwestern punk rock genre can end up being for its fans. This was an especially relevant issue when I began this project and still is today.
This project is also meant to discuss and normalize queerness, as well as topics of mental health, the privilege of having an audience, and influencing that audience positively.
This novel has taken a few years to complete. I chose it for my senior project to encourage myself to complete it and edit it so that it would be up to publishable standards by the time I graduated. This novel is intended to be the first piece of writing that I will send out to publishers, to start my writing career.
Story
When up-and-coming Reno punk band "Punk Tooth" gets signed onto a tour with the world's biggest rock band, they might be in over their heads. They now have to navigate new fame and scrutiny, as well as the unsavory behavior of rock stars, all while keeping a monstrous secret of their own.
This is the story of a small punk band struggling with newfound fame and the pressures of the rock-and-roll world while battling their own inner and literal monsters. It explores the real-life problems in the music industry and adds a pop of the supernatural for some spice.
