Category: Writing-fiction-novel

More on that darn first draft...

7/20/2015

I got so many more questions on that darn first draft. I know how you feel. You just read your favorite novel and your soul if full of butterflies that need to come out. You sit down and start jutting down ideas and guess what?

Nothing’s good enough.

Well, good news, that’s perfectly normal. Below is my personal process, in detail.

1- I make an outline of all the events I want to include in the book, trying to put them in chronological order (months, years). For some reason I always do this on paper, in pencil. Below is what one of my outlines look like. It wouldn’t make any sense even if it were in just one language, and it’s not ;P

By the way, I have no idea who Cenveo publisher services are, someone must have given me a free notepad.

2-Then I start writing on my computer. This is no pleasure ride. The writing is coarse, dialogues drag, descriptions are irritating. Nothing works. Once in a while I get into it (those typically will be the parts that end up staying in the book) but mostly I have to force myself to keep going, because IT SUCKS. As I do this I add notes whenever I realize I forgot something on the outline. I will add it later. For now, just keep going, get it all out.

3-As I suffer surviving that part of the process that I poetically referred to as “Shitting a brick” I keep an eye on my word count. Why? Because sometimes I feel like the story is coming to an end and I’m around 100,000 words. GREAT! Plenty of room to cut and chisel and be done at around 80,000, ideal for a YA novel (check my post on work length if you are unsure how long your work should be). But some other times I get to “the end” and I’m at 30,000 or 200,000 in which case I have to rethink the plot, split it into two books aor merge it with another one.

4-Typically, toward the end of the first draft I become excited because I start to see where the book is going, which topics I will need to develop and which others I will boot out of the draft (and likely move to a different novel). I can’t see the novel till the first draft is done, I can’t see what characters will play a part in it and which ones will need to be slaughtered. You have to go through with it, even if it sucks, even if you’re ashamed of it, even if you have to get yourself off tumblr every twenty minutes because you keep getting distracted. JUST. KEEP. WRITING.

5-And then? You survived the first draft! Now the fun part comes. Now that you know what’s relevant to your plot and you have a path, your main plot, you can start to polish dialogue, description, and everything else. Now you know which feelings to build toward, which seeds to plant early on etcetera. The rest will be still hard work, but fun, because you feel like you’re making your work better. You’re finally sculpting your work of art. Just get there, plow through!

JUST DO IT!

Twenty steps to write a successful novel

More on that darn first draft...

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