Write Better, Write Faster, With This One Hack

Write Better, Write Faster, With This One Hack

 

Here’s a hack to help you write faster and better in first draft. This maybe particularly helpful for discovery writers though outliners can use it too. The thing is when we start a chapter we are most vulnerable to doubting our ability to write the chapter. This may lead to procrastination, which can lead to all kinds of bad habits. Scrolling, raiding the fridge with abandon , too much coffee, watching bad streaming series, anything but writing.

 

 

So, to get you started. Don’t just discovery write the chapter. Discovery write a little summary of the chapter before you write the actual chapter.. 

 

Write a paragraph or two or three and maybe some dialogue in the tone of the chapter around the characters you think might be in the chapter and what they’re doing. Write whatever comes into your head. 

 

Revise as you write it. Try to get down what you want to happen in the chapter. Write some dialogue if it comes to you (it often does to me when I’m trying to write this). 

 

YOU CANNOT SPEND LONG ON THIS. 

Ten or fifteen minutes. No more. Do it right after you’ve finished the last chapter.

 

You’re really focusing on what happens in the chapter so this is mostly plot. However, if you’re going to bring in a new character you can add a bit of description of the character. 

 

Write any notes to yourself that might help. For example, “the character is angry in this chapter. Make sure you show the anger build as the chapter goes along.”

 

Remember, this is for your eyes only. You’re writing this to yourself. You and you.

 

You’ll be surprised how this helps you write a better and faster chapter.

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 do you get to those two words every novelist loves to write, THE END? I'll tell you...

 

Are you sitting down? You have to be sitting down to write a novel so that's step 1. Step 2—the blank page is waiting. Start filling it up. HOWEVER, if you think, "OMG, I've got to write hundreds of pages and how will I ever, ever do that when I've got nothing but...almost nothing...maybe a tiny idea, maybe a vague character? This is impossible." If you think this or something like this, it might be impossible. Think smaller steps... Whether you begin with an outline or you just start writing, don't focus on writing a novel. Don't even focus on writing a chapter because what a chapter is, that's vague. What you want is a step that you can easily climb up. What you need is a clear goal. THINK scene. Think of a scene you want to write. My advice is even if you're not an outliner, you write a little one paragraph note to yourself about what happens in this scene you're going to write and what you want the reader to feel or maybe think and what happens and something about the people involved in the scene. Then write that one scene as best you can. Then go on to the next scene. Often a scene will be a chapter but not always. That doesn't matter. Just keep moving from scene to scene. My advice is that you keep trying to give yourself a foot up in the scene by writing a quick paragraph about each scene before you write it. Then write the scene. Then move on to the next.

Step by step, scene by scene, you'll reach where you want to go which is that final page with that final sentence and the words THE END.

How to Write a Novel: Part 1: How to get started

 I'm going to write a series of posts on how to write a novel from beginning to the final revision and try to give some tips on how to keep going. I'll try to keep the entries fairly short. Hope at least some of these tips will be helpful. Brian

There are three secrets to writing a novel. Unfortunately nobody knows what they are.” ― W. Somerset Maugham

Martial Art of Writing

• Similarities to martial arts and writing: both require skills and art. Training is similar.

• Break-down movements to understand what you’re trying to do. Then practice. Then put movements together. Then practice. Repetition will build muscle memory. Same in writing. You will learn habits (through reading a lot and writing a lot) that will help you write without thinking about how you’re doing what you’re doing.

• You have to get to a place where you are writing without thinking about writing. You’re just trying to live within the scene. You’ll have revision to be more analytical.

 YOU NEED BOTH

• TELL A STORY/ USE LANGUAGE WELL. Be a story teller and a good writer and you’ll write novels and stories people want to read. These do work together, of course, but you need to understand that the skills come from different places in your mind. You have to see with different eyes.(Need specifics for this to be clear but step 1 is realizing these two essential skills come from different places)

• Language—tone, pacing, dialogue, character building, especially through dialogue.

• Story: plot, structure: various layers of plot and structure. These can be sentence level sometimes but are definitely: scene, chapter, complete novel. Character development as linked to story

• Theme is important: you need to figure out what you’re writing about but it’s not something you have to know right away.

And also

• Language and story are partners.

• Language usage can create emotions by the choice of words and by creating word images (like the camera does in film) for the reader. They see what’s happening and become involved with it. Characters become real.

• Story-plot and structure-hacks the mind of the reader to pull them along with action that keeps them turning the page but also involves them in the bigger story that makes for a satisfying read. Your reader needs to have a strong narrative and feel a sense of progression toward the end.

Excellent short short example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9iFWyihDvCE

 

Why is this short-short good?

• Boy kicks dog...conflict established...

• Audience sympathetic for puppy—engaged because of this sympathy and how the boy is treating him.

• The puppy keeps trying in DIFFERENT ways. The boy keeps resisting. Engages the reader with a question. Will the boy give in?

• We’re still pissed and irritated by boy (I’m a dog lover)

• BUT we want the boy to be won over by the puppy. We want it for the puppy but we also sort of want it for the boy, hope that it might make him less of a punk.

• Then we see the boy. The twist/surprise/changes the story that makes us see everything we’ve already seen in a different way.

• As the British says, Brilliant.

ALAS, FIRST DRAFTS SUCK. BE READY FOR IT. I ADVISE, LOW EXPECTATIONS. Keep writing your way through good and bad days.

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mVZtujY2G0
  

• Failing—being willing to fail—is essential to whatever success you eventually come to with your work

PROCESS (FOR ME) BEGINNING

• Character in a situation...and the situation must have potential for CONFLICT

• A boy and a girl from warring families fall in love. (this may have been done once or twice)

• A boy’s father dies and he suspects it’s murder— worse that his uncle is involved and maybe his mother.

A girl wakesonashipthatseemstobeonthesea but realizes that she is dead. (Zevin, Elsewhere)

TO OUTLINE OR NOT TO OUTLINE: Are you a discovery writer or an outliner or a little of both? Most people are probably a little of both. 

John Irving is the ultimate outliner. Brandon Sanderson is also a big outliner. Stephen King is a discovery writer.  There is no one way to work. You have to find out what works for you. Experiment. 

• A character in a situation is how I usually begin. This may include a setting idea along with story. This will get you started but you need more to keep going. If all I have is a cool situation, it’s hard to move past the opening.

• I do one page of outlining to have a very general idea of what might happen in the novel. At least this way I can move beyond just the first twenty/ thirty pages.

• Then I do a POINTS ON THE MAP—four or five points—from beginning to end that will help me move from point to point. Next step, I’ll try one sentence summary of some scenes in-between the points. All of the above will change in revision

• I do outlining as I go along.

• Sometimes I will try to just write what I want to do in a scene and write some dialogue as a way to get started on a difficult scene

• I try to follow my own advice and keep writing and not let myself be stopped by the messy and ugly first draft.

  
  

  
  

Exercise

• Do an outline-–a points on a map outline for a story you’re working on (at least five points). Or if you don’t have a story, do an outline for one of the following:

• A girl volunteering in an assisted living community notices that people die when they’re befriended by one of the women who lives there.

• A policeman owns ten cats and comes home one night and they’re all gone.

• A boy and his girlfriend (who cheated on him) meet at a party.

• A father and his son, who have never gotten along, have to learn to live together after the boy’s mother/father’s wife dies. One scene that shows them trying to cope together—maybe after the funeral.

• A boy suddenly realizes he has some kind of supernatural ability. Maybe he can read minds. He talks to his parents about it. They reveal a secret.