Choices When Writing A Novel: they're everywhere

A lot of writing fiction is about the choices you make as a writer. You have to make choices in a story. Do I go right here or left? Does he fall in love, out of love? Does she decide to fight the monster in her past? You make these big decisions that affect the main plot of the novel and you make scene decisions and sometimes even paragraph decisions. Do I describe this action in detail or give just enough detail to get to the next scene? Then there are character decisions. Then there are world-building decisions. And, of course, there are language decisions. Which words to use and what syntax and so on.

 

Each choice means you give up other possibilities. If you’re a discovery writers sometimes these get to feeling a bit random. That’s because you’re working your story out as you’re writing it.

 

Outliners try to make many of these choices when outlining. But we pantsers, discovery, drafter type of writers can’t do that. WE JUST CAN’T. We may want to, thinking that outlining offers more organization and safety, but when we try we fail in terrible ways that kill ideas or cause novels to die in early stages. 

 

I write this from personal experience. 

 

So what I do is try to add some control to my discovery writing by going all in with the discovery. In drafts 1 and 2, I let myself be open to whatever changes come my way. Draft 1 is my zoom draft. I’m discovering my story and characters. I do this in less than two weeks. On the novel I’m writing write now, I wrote about 20000 words. SO I do listing and freewriting chapters and dialogue and sometimes abbreviated action etc... I write CHOICES in some of those. I could have the character do this or that or this and that or… I just write out possibilities in places.

 

Second draft I’m making a lot of choices. But it comes naturally because I have a familiarity with my story. I can make more informed choices. I can avoid the MAJOR kind of rewriting I’ve had to do on my manuscripts in the past. Thank the Gods.

 

By third draft I’ll have 65K or more and I’ll really know my world and story and characters and this is where I’m doing only a bit of rewriting and much more revising.

 

However many revisions I do, 1 or 2 or even 3 after these first two drafts, they’re more focused and much faster.

 

Hope this gives you some ideas about working with choices.

 

Brian

Don't Forget to Foreshadow in Your Novel

 

It’s one of the most important skills in the storytelling aspect of writing novels. Alas, it is often ignored for its more flashy cousins but it's important in many ways.

 

When writers talk about progression of a plot or, for that matter, progression of a character arc, they’re talking about the steps of plot or character that lead the reader to a satisfying ending. If you can create foreshadowing, that is give the reader of hint of what is to come, and then build what is to come in an interesting way, that’s an important part of plot progression.

 

I work on foreshadowing the most after I have a workable draft (maybe my second or third) and know where my ending of various plots are. Some of my minor plots may finish before the end of the manuscript, but the most important ones are at the end and will require several steps. If I can foreshadow at least some of these steps as I move the novel forward, I'll create suspense and that sense of progression and, perhaps that satisfying payoff. Another way to say this: the foreshadowing helps me lay out the breadcrumbs that the reader will follow to the destination, the conclusion of the novel.

 

Hope this is helpful.

 

Happy Writing Fellow Campers—

 

Brian