How To Build A Novel, Part II

 So you’ve written draft one. Congrats. Next stop, draft two. But draft two will depend on how draft one turned out. Maybe you feel like your draft one has most of the basics of plot, character, and setting. You just need to go into more detail or maybe add some scenes or take some scenes out.  

If this is the case, then in draft two, you’ll still be discovering things. But, big difference — you’ve written draft one from beginning to end. You can see the whole story. You have a better understanding of the balance between show and tell and what you want to focus on and what you need and what you don’t need to show in a scene.

Because you have written draft one from beginning to end, with some middle parts in between, you’ll know things you didn’t know before, and it will change the manuscript. You’ll have figured out plot points that you didn’t understand before. Maybe you’ll realize aspects of your character you didn’t. The first draft, you can now see, is like an out-of-focus photo. The second draft it your chance to bring it into focus. Trust your instincts. Rewrite where needed. If you have readers you trust, after you rewrite the second draft is a good time to get opinions that can help you identify weaknesses.

However, let’s say you’re a new writer or you’re an experienced writer, but this novel has been tough for you for one reason or another. There’s a lot you need to figure out and work on in this novel. In that case, when you’re writing your second draft, do not go back to the beginning and rewrite from page 1 to the end. Identify the problems and go and work on those sections right away. You’re not quite ready to do the second draft from beginning to end. After you feel like you’ve got the big problems, or most of them, solved, then go to page 1 and move through the manuscript again.

Usually the second draft takes about as long as the first draft for me unless there are major problems. In that case, it will take longer.

The third draft is refining what you’ve written more. You’ll do a lot in this draft, but it will mostly be making dialogue pop, working on consistency of character, clarifying plot points. It will be improving language at the sentence level and looking for ways to add emotion or humor or whatever it is your fiction will require. Usually, this is completed faster than my first or second drafts.

 Fourth draft, for me, is grammar and listening to the manuscript read to me by an app on my computer. Sometimes a sentence will sound wrong to me and I’ll revise it. This last draft takes less than a week.

 This is how I build a novel.

How To Build A Novel

This is just how I build a novel. There are many ways to build one but let me tell you how I do it and maybe give you some tips that will help you if it works for you.

This is just how I build a novel. There are many ways to build one, but let me tell you how I do it and maybe give you some tips that will help you if it works for you.

I never start with an outline. I think about what I’m going to write and sometimes I’ll write down some ideas. These are random and maybe one sheet of ideas—could be an idea about a character, setting, or plot point. That’s the most I do. The least is I just start writing. Sometimes that’s what I do.

Starting a novel for me is a freaking leap of faith. This is the jump off the cliff and sew a parachute on the way down moment. You have to believe in yourself and your ability to find your way.

If you write like this, you have to get used to the idea that you will need several drafts. The first draft, for most all of us, especially us discovery writers (pantsers, same as discovery writers) is not going to be enough. Think low expectations for draft 1. Be easy on yourself. Write yourself notes when you notice you’re not developing a scene etc... notes you can use in revision.

So, first the foundation. You build anything, you need a foundation. Put that down. Then frame up your novel by adding whatever comes to mind. This is your first draft. Write it fast. Write it in a month if you can but whatever. Keep Moving Forward. Do not rewrite as you go along. Get to the end.

When you have the end, you really have something, even it if is not the true end. You have a novel. However rough it is. You have a beginning, stuff in-between, and an end. Congratulations. You are on your way. 

But the steps of revision are as important, more important for me, than the initial draft. More on those next blog in How to Build A Novel, part 2.

All You Need To Know About Characters In A Few Short Paragraphs

You need the reader to connect with your characters. There are lots of ways to do this but if they don’t connect to your characters, they won’t care about your story. You know I’m right. Think of your own reading of books or watching of shows and movies. Sure, an interesting story is important, but if you don’t care about the characters, you’ll give up on the story.

The way to get a reader to connect to a character is through the things the character wants/needs/desires and the things he or she fears. The acts that the character does in order to get what he or she wants and in order to avoid what he or she fears create character. The character’s reflection on what happens because of their actions shows the character’s interior life.

Also, when you get this action & reflection down, the right amounts of each, in main characters it will drive your plot.  

Thinking about this in early drafts might help you decide what happens next or how a scene should work. Thinking about this in later drafts might help you select what you should keep and what should be cut.

And that’s that for character building.

Not really. There’s always more to writing fiction. But it is a good start.

Guest Blogger: My Sheepdog "On Having An Author For A Companion."

 GUEST BLOGGER: MY SHEEPDOG “On Having an author for a Companion”

 

Brian, the writer, is at it again. Sitting there. Looking at the computer. Staring out the window. Looking at the computer. He doesn’t even see anything when he looks out the window. There are some perfectly good birds out there that certainly need chasing. Not to mention one of those mangy little squirrels hopping around the yard with impudence. He doesn’t even notice them. He doesn’t hear anything either. There’s a German Shepard barking from up the road, a woman yelling at her daughter, a motorcycle backfiring. I would love to bark at these sounds, let them and the world know I’m on duty, but he’d get all upset because he’s BUSY. Right, BUSY. Busy making things up.

Nevertheless, I understand dreams. I have them myself. I dream of the old days. Once my ancestors took care of the sheep and fought  wolves, the kind with sharp teeth and claws. There weren’t many sheep lost when a sheepdog was around. We were made for it. 

I can see that Brian is made for what he does. In the end, doing what you’re made for doing leads to happiness. Not every day. Not every moment. But enough. Certainly this was once true of my ancestors. We gathered the sheep together and watched over even the weakest and in the end we did what we were made to do and it made us happy. If I could write, that’s what I would write about. And the taste of fried chicken and the fat on a steak. Chasing squirrels. 

Still, sometimes I dream of sheep. I dream I’m in a grassy meadow, a full moon above me and bright twinkling stars in a black sky, and somewhere far off a wolf howls. My sheep begin to shiver and make frightened sounds and I rise from where I lay and walk among them and I say, “Everything is all right. It's all right. I will protect you.” And I feel them calm, feel the calm spread just as the fear was spreading seconds before. Is this what it’s like of him, I wonder? He sits at his desk and he makes things up and things come to him from places he can't name and it makes him happy.

Brian here: Writing is fun. Don't forget the joy. Allow yourself the joy.

 

Shameless self-promotion…. Book 11 in the Strangely Scary Funny series comes out on Saturday, Feb 22. It’s called The Librarian and the Goddess. Here’s an amazon link: https://www.amazon.com/Librarian-Goddess-Supernatural-Suspense-Strangely-ebook/dp/B0DPJMD7K6/?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_w=ZZZbH&content-id=amzn1.sym.bc3ba8d1-5076-4ab7-9ba8-a5c6211e002d&pf_rd_p=bc3ba8d1-5076-4ab7-9ba8-a5c6211e002d&pf_rd_r=133-3852978-2801016&pd_rd_wg=nAV3L&pd_rd_r=1db1fcba-e0c0-4521-933a-267f38e8d436&ref_=aufs_ap_sc_dsk

 

Also, special deal: I have a new box-set of the first four novels in the series out. To promote I’m making it 0.99 cents for three days starting Feb. 28. https://www.amazon.com/Librarian-Supernatural-Horror-Comedy-Strangely-ebook/dp/B0DVRT6LKK?ref_=ast_author_dp_rw&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.7EAQLCrPFCK_H6Mx9VeE7zR9_xFUH68u9GBiWF6aUHavuLiQxT7pUauTA3nywsCNkPr54lOtzpP1nvCnBAxYVNKKi1LDfyMrEaMLFy-0Rgin5zn391SLPOStepk2uavIv_y4DxGapHSsxBwQKwODnWHrZpaU_UROzgHX4Ttalnw9_dfTYCbCC7uFivwKdZ7BfF1lqlVvWXPGbZKdBH25V_m0VgOqbfwNtQfXQ0HW4TY.0TKKRGH9LyJMHNQ7doQzwHAqBQ6SMTutZAlQFG5E3jA&dib_tag=AUTHOR

 

The box-set is on audible, too, but, alas, not for 0.99.

Write Faster and Better Doing This One Thing

 Writing in the Zone

One of THE most important things that will make your writing successful is learning to focus on writing in such a way that you are WRITING IN THE ZONE. When you are writing in the zone you aren't thinking about writing you're just writing. When you're doing this, you're making all the right moves intuitively. You're focused. You're getting down a lot of words because you're in the zone, in the flow, and they are the right words. They're building your story, they're developing your characters, your setting, your voice, your voices. DO this one thing and your writing will improve exponentially. 

FOCUS. 

When you write only write. No phone. No looking things up. No talking. No. No. No. Only one yes--write.  You do what you have to do to get in the state. (I get up at about the same time in the early morning, get my OJ and a cup of coffee, and sit down in the same place and take a few deep breaths and I'm off and running). Get in the state and write. Do not let anything interrupt you. Go with the flow. You can't be stopped.  

You'll be surprised at how much more you will get done and how much better you'll write with a consistent focus in your writing sessions. Good luck. 

Brian

Writers, Do Not Give Up

 Do Not Give Up

 

There’s a point in a first draft when everything feels wrong to me. The landscape looks wrong; nothing is where it’s supposed to be. The words I’ve written are not right and so I can’t see the words I want to write to move ahead. Everything was clear just a few days ago. Now it’s all a mess. One big mess.

It would be easy to quit. It would be easy to say it’s all wrong. I could delete. I could start over with a clean page. So full of possibilities, so neat. Or I could just go back to page one and rewrite even though I’m on page sixty. I could do that.

 

Don’t.

 

A novel, like life, is messy. A first draft is really messy. You have to push on. Do not abandon ship. Don’t. Get a draft down. It’s essential.

 

Remember, low expectations for your first draft. It’s the beginning, not the end. You’ll revise and edit. Allow yourself to write some crappy work in order to get to the good stuff.

E.L. Doctorow described writing a novel as being like traveling across the country on a dark highway. The car's headlights allow you to see a few feet ahead. That’s all you need to drive through the dark. Faith is a big part of writing a novel. (Also, it’s kind of a big part of driving a car in the dark but don’t think about that, especially when you’re driving).

 

Keep the faith.

 

When Your Characters Take The Wheel, LET THEM

  

 

Most writers feel this, I think. I certainly have. I want to feel it. I strive to feel it. I’m talking about when your characters seem to take over and make things happen. Maybe it is just finding the place, the altered state, which allows you to access that part of the brain that makes intuitive leaps. I try to get to this place every time I write. 

 

Your characters and their story become real in that moment.

Sometimes your characters take you places you hadn’t thought of or intended to go and these places are the right places for your story. Some of the truest writing comes from these moments because it’s coming from inside the world of the characters and story. You aren’t forcing it. You aren’t designing it. The characters seem to be real and you’re just trying to keep up and write down what happens to them and how they think and feel.

Of course sometimes you have to force your story. Sometimes you have to work things out and plan a scene and re-imagine something that’s happened that seems wrong. You have to strategically plan a plot. 

 

But what is better is you are in that altered state (I get to this by writing every day at the same time, rereading the last chapter I wrote the day before, writing in the same place, really trying to focus on writing and ignoring all the distractions I try to create for myself to pull me away from writing). It’s often when you’re writing WITHOUT THINKING that the characters seem to take over and you write some of your best scenes. 

 

Happy Writing…