THREE TIPS &DISCOVERY WRITERS’ SECRET WEAPON
Disclaimer: This is just my way of approaching novel writing. Use what helps you and discard the rest. That’s my advice for all writing advice. I am a discovery writer and what I’m giving you are my top tips for my process of discovery. What do I discover as I write? Pretty much everything. I usually just have an idea of who my main character is, and what he or she wants and what might get in the way. I have hardly any details of the character, setting, or plot. My style is my style, but the tone might not even be clear at the beginning.
Three Important Tips
1. Write your first draft quickly. Try to get a draft done in a month or less. Preferably less. Understand that you won’t be writing out everything. If you get on a roll, write the whole scene or scenes of a chapter. If not, just try to explain what happens. So your first draft may only be 20K or 30K However it will be from beginning to end. You will be working on the big three of writing: character, setting and plot. You won’t be working on the important use of language much in this draft. That comes in revision. Be easy on yourself in order to get this rough draft on the page. As I’ve said before, LOW EXPECTATIONS. It is very helpful to have low expectations in this case though, of course, best not to embrace this as a strategy for other aspects of your life.
TIPS TWO AND THREE HAVE TO DO WITH REVISION.
2. Remember that what you have is a draft you wrote in a month. Be prepared to make whatever changes are necessary. You will make mistakes in a discovery draft. You’ll sometimes even realize you have to add more characters or take them out. You have a draft on paper and now you have something to work with, but you have to be realistic; it’s a beginning, not an end.
3. TIP number 3 has to do with a specific aspect of number 2 and it’s your secret weapon. Be prepared to reverse engineer on draft 2. In fact, plan for it. Once you get the characters and setting right and improve the language a bit, you’ll need to go through for plot. You discovered your story in your original draft. Most likely, your story will need to be reworked. HERE, SPECIFICALLY, IS HOW YOU DO THAT. You look for places in the manuscript that are exciting and interesting but maybe need to be moved to a later point in the story so that you can build some steps to them for the reader. Let’s say you have a character do something important in the last third of your novel, but it feels abrupt. You look for aspects of the character that make the reader understand her more, give motivation, and you go back through the manuscript and you create opportunities that show the character developing bit by bit so that their act feels authentic. For example, in draft 1, your character turns out to have strong feelings for her next-door-neighbor. This could be a significant sub-plot, but you didn’t realize the feelings until the end of draft 1. Now you go through the whole manuscript and look for ways to build, little by little, a progression that makes the reader see the evolution of the character’s feelings. You know the destination of this aspect of the plot. Show the reader how the character gets there. Do this with all aspects of your novel. Secret weapon.
Hope this helps. Write on, Writers.
Brian
