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.

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.

guest blogger: my sheepdog

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 alive, but he’d get all upset because he’s BUSY. Right, BUSY. A dog must have more control than a human. They can make all kinds of noise and no one complains.

Nevertheless, I understand dreams. I have them myself. I dream of the old days. Once my ancestors took care of the sheep and fought the sharp teeth and claws of hungry wolves. 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 makes you happy. Not every day. Not every moment. But, yes, happy. Certainly this was once true of my ancestors. We gathered the sheep together and watched over even the weakest and in the end doing what we were made to do made us happy. If I could write, that’s what I would write about, the loss of this noble profession. And perhaps the taste of fried chicken and the fat from steak and, naturally, Alpo Choice Cuts from a can.

Still, sometimes I dream of sheep though I’ve never actually seen one in real life. 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, “That wolf will not get you. Not that wolf. Not that one.” And I feel them calm, feel the calm spread just as the fear was spreading a second before. Is this what it’s like I wonder? Is this why he sits at his desk all those hours?

Writers and Wrath

Here’s a quote T.C. Boyle used in his review (NYT book review last Sunday) of John Updike’s final collection of stories. It’s from a story titled “The Full Glass”. A man approaching 80 reflects on an affair he had, as a young man, with a vibrant, brassy woman. When she dies, he thinks her death “removed a confusing presence from the world, an index to its unfulfilled potential.” To me that’s great writing. Lightning. The flash that makes you see far beyond the sentence and story.

Okay enough with the lightning. Well, maybe just one more thing. I remember watching a late-night show once where a guy who’d been struck by lighting three times was explaining how it felt. Nothing poetic about it. The talk-show host asked him if he didn’t think someone was trying to tell him something. That got a laugh but the guy, who was a golfer, shrugged the host off.

“My mother-in-law hates golf,” he said. “She thinks golfers just naturally attract the wrath of god.”

Do writers? I think writers, like other artists, need hubris to attempt the act of creation. Hubris, in Greek and Roman myths, often led to punishment of a good old-fashioned nature (those were the days) like blinding, dismemberment, being burned alive and so on. So, it’s dangerous. Writers, as a group, don’t really need a higher power to punish them though. They do a pretty good job of inflicting punishment on themselves. They drink too much. They have a high suicide rate. They spend unhealthy amounts of time starring at walls and thinking over things they’ve seen or done in an attempt to fill blank pages with symbols. It’s a strange way to spend one’s life. It can take a lot out of you.

No, I don’t think writers just naturally attract the wrath of God, but they may occasionally annoy him. I can hear him wonder aloud, “Who do they think they are anyway?” Maybe that’s part of our problem. We don’t know who we are much of the time. When we’re deep in a manuscript sometimes who we are blurs with who our characters are, and it can be a struggle to have normal conversations about the weather and the price of gas, eat spaghetti, button up shirts properly.

Anyway, the golfer was kind of a putz. I mean, come on, you’re out in an open area with a piece of metal in a violent storm and you wonder why you get struck by lighting?

Or so I think today.

writing and canine criticism

Last week my Old English Sheepdog, Merlin, pulled some of the manuscript pages of my latest WIP from my desk and began to eat them. Merlin, like most dogs, is adept at non-verbal communication. Of course he is also, another noble trait of the canine, notoriously good-natured and non-judgmental. I wondered what could have driven him to such uncharacteristic and extreme criticism.

After I managed to wrench the somewhat chewed but readable manuscript pages out of Merlin’s toothy grip, I started to read them. A growing uneasiness began at the nape of my neck and spread and that uneasiness became queasiness and that queasiness became despair. It was, alas, all wrong. Started in the wrong place. Went on too long here and not long enough there. Most importantly the life, somehow, had been squeezed out of it and the characters moved as if they were clueless stick figures rather than living creatures.

Merlin was right.

So though I am going to write about writing in this blog, and though I’ve written a lot of words and sentences and pages and have learned, maybe, a few things that might be of some small use to beginners, the truth is no writer, on any given day, really knows more than a sheepdog happily chewing away on a manuscript. And what we know on any given day is sort of a stab at the truth. Another day we might feel differently. I should probably end everything I say about writing with—Or so I think today.

That’s a good idea.

Or so I think today.