8 Apr 2012
8 CommentsWriting the First Draft of My First Novel 01
In the spirit of finishing all the old stuff and not starting new stuff, I have been working on a fiction story I started and then abandoned previously. It’s a piece of contemporary urban fantasy that I started for NaNoWriMo last year and then put to the side after only a few thousand words.
I spent years thinking about and coming up with ideas for an epic fantasy, but realized that I just wasn’t ready skillwise to write it, so I decided to get back to this story tentatively titled Rattle and Thump🙂 I figured it would be short, and good for practice.
The reason for this blog post is so that I can talk to myself about what it is I’m doing. This is my first serious attempt at writing a whole novel. I’m having some trouble with it and honestly, this shit is hard. I’m about 20,000 words in and I’m shooting for about 100,000 which I can probably chop down to 80-90,000 once it’s done.
So, like I was saying, this is just me talking to myself about what’s going on with this story. I wanted to keep a record. Maybe it can also help new writers figure out how to get started with their own stuff.
First off, I’m something of a discovery writer. That means I tend to not plot and outline ahead of time. I just write and see where it goes. The downside of this is that there’s a good chance that a large chunk of what I’m writing is going to disappear when I start the next draft. That is to say, a big chunk of the discovery process is…discovering. So that’s a lot of fruitless writing. However, I also do outline a little. I just do it as I go, as things change in the story. Once I can see where I’m headed, then I can start outlining more and plotting ahead more.
To put this in perspective, when I started writing, I had a definite ending in my mind and a start. However, I had no idea how I would get from one to the other. So I just started writing. After a few thousand words, I have a bunch of new ideas, and I know the material slightly better. Now I have several little scenarios that I know must happen to bridge the gap between beginning to end. So the challenge becomes how do I get from A to B in order to eventually reach Z.
This creates a new set of issues. I don’t even fully know what’s going on yet, and my characters haven’t become human yet, that is to say, I barely know them. The fantasy elements are also a problem. I’m not sure of what type of magic system or what types of beings populate this world. I’m 20k words in and I’m still not absolutely sure if I’ll have the vampires and werewolves and shit like everybody else.
But to go back to the A to B thing. In trying to get to B. In making that attempt, I learn a bunch of new things and the story moves much differently than I expected. Now that changes my pseudo outline and even my ending and also my beginning. I’m not sure, but I think this might be something that stops a lot of writers. Because now, the desire to go back and start over is really strong. You want to make the stuff you wrote previously match the stuff you’re writing now. However, all of the years of writing advice I ever heard tells me this one thing: Finish the rough/first draft!
That is the advice I’m following. I am going to finish this draft before I change anything at all. If I get caught up constantly going back and changing shit and rewriting things, then I’ll never finish. And I’ll also get bored with it, a problem that I am very, very prone to (hence the whole getting old stuff finished thing).
On a more nuts and bolts level, I’m noticing that it is very, very easy for me to fall into passive voice. I use it all the time. And as somebody that writes articles and copy for others, I realize this is the 666. But I can’t help it. That means that when I go back to do the second draft, I’m sure it’s going to be a super tedious, sentence by sentence rewrite…and that scares me.
One thing that I didn’t realize, and a lot of writing books and writing podcasts don’t talk about it, is that I’m supposed to be writing in scenes. It seems obvious, but it came to me as something of an epiphany. I always thought of chapters flowing from one to the other with each chapter technically being something of a scene. But then I realized that each chapter itself is made up of a series of scenes. I came to understand that was the missing element preventing me from seeing how to segue from one point to another. I didn’t have to write everything between A and B, I just needed to write a series of individual scenes that steer the narrative that way.
This record is my attempt to tell myself that I’m serious this time. I can’t get better unless I write and I have to finish one of these stories. Besides, I may be gone before 2012 lets out. I want to at least make an attempt at doing something I love. Let’s see how it goes and how far we can take it. Unfortunately, working on this story and thinking about it constantly has stalled my work on a bunch of other, non-related stuff…but we’ll figure it out.
If you have any questions about this process, or want me to get into more detail about something particular, feel free to leave a message here or drop me a line and I’ll answer. Maybe we can figure this craziness out together! 🙂
In the next post, I’ll add a bunch of links to people more accomplished and talented than me talking about writing first and rough drafts. I may even add some audio.
If you happen to be curious about what type of writing software I’m using for this project, check out this article I wrote about free (but good!) writing software: http://writinghood.com/writing/free-novel-and-fiction-writing-software/
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22 Apr 2012
1 CommentWriting the First Draft of My First Novel 02
The writing hasn’t been going too well 🙁
When I started, I was on a small vacation from work. Unfortunately, when I started back up at the 9 to 5, the writing stagnated. I did do a lot of thinking about my story, and that’s good. But thinking about it ain’t writing it.
It’s not just the regular job though. I heard several times that for writers, especially discovery writers, the story might not make itself apparent until you are several thousands of words in. I can attest to that and say it is absolutely true. Approaching the 30,000-word mark, I started to finally see the beginning of the shape of my story. That disturbed me…greatly.
30,000 words is a lot of words. I did not want to think that all of this writing was for nothing. Keep in mind that I said that I am only just STARTING to see the SHAPE of my story.
That means I have 30,000 words that are pretty much worthless. And it also means that I hit a stumbling block. Everything in me wants me to just start the whole thing over from the beginning with all of the changes I need to make. I need to make my main character more of a dick. I need to start further back in the timeline than I initially started with. I need to set up the situation in a completely different way than I originally intended. I need to start from scratch.
But all of the masters have told me that I need to keep going forward. I need to finish this rough draft.
Two things here: First is that statement about going back in the timeline and the other is the idea of a rough draft.
Timeline. A constant failure of mines is thinking too far back. Stories are supposed to begin when something changes. Unfortunately, I tend to think of everything in epic scale. For instance: I had an idea for an epic fantasy series. I started writing it as I do most things. No forethought, just sit down, start typing, and see what comes out. Well, once I started typing, I started thinking of all the things that happened to lead up to that current moment. I had a female protagonist, but then I thought about her parents. What was it about them that made her who and what she was? Well, thinking of her parents led me to conjuring up an entire epic fantasy series dealing with her father and his cousin. Yes…a whole trilogy.
Plotting out that series in my mind, I THEN had an idea for an epic fantasy SERIES that dealt with the progenitor of one of the secondary characters. This would be a series that took place in the far distant past. So I started thinking on that. Overwhelmed by it all, I just gave up altogether, but I never stopped thinking about all three epic storylines. But do you see the utter madness of it? That’s why in my previous post, I said I realized that I was not ready for the epic fantasy.
And this problem of mines has come back to haunt me. Once I started realizing the shape and path of my current story, my mind just started adding to it and adding to it. I wanted this to be a single book with a beginning, middle and end. But the more I think about it and the more I create, the more there is to add. I am already thinking about setting up things that will not bear any fruit until book 3 or 4. But I haven’t even made my way through book 1 yet! It makes me want to just stop altogether.
The other thing is the rough draft. From what I can see, the terms “first” and “rough” are interchangeable. But I’m starting to suspect that discovery writers always have the burden of writing at least one extra draft. I know that when I make it through this very rough draft, it is probably not going to be anything like a coherent story. This is my rough draft. When I’m done, I’ll have to turn it into my first draft. Once I do that, then I will be able to really dig into it and start the process of putting it together correctly.
And that’s ANOTHER thing that has me frozen like a deer in the headlights. I suppose for some, this must come easy. But to me, it’s one of the hardest things I have ever attempted.
So the writing has stagnated. I started writing this post a few days weeks ago. In the meantime, I’ve been doing some writing ABOUT my story, but no actual story writing. As I stated above, the problem is that the story has changed. I don’t know how to continue with the writing.
To give an example: I figured out a few things about my main two characters, which changes everything that I have written about them previously. Now, how do I continue with what I am writing when the things I am writing about are no longer true to the story? Do you see what I’m saying?
I had three ideas to try to make it through.
I figure I could go with all three ideas. I can outline the new backstory and early chapters up until the point where I currently am, and then I can jump just a little bit forward in the story and just go from there. Of course, once I make it to the end, I can go back and rewrite the whole beginning.
Does any of that make sense? Even with my many split infinitives and sentences that begin with conjunctions? Well, it makes sense to me. And it’s for me that I’m writing this blog post…so there 😛
Oh yea, in my last post I promised you people links! I’ll add them to the next post. I’ve been sitting on this post for so long, I figured I’d just get it out. I will add some audio like I promised though 🙂
Also, if you are interested in some of the free writing software I use then check out my article here: https://silenciobarnes.net/writing/free-novel-and-fiction-writing-software/
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