Previous posts in this series: Making Space, Actually Writing, and Get Ready to Celebrate.

As we turn our attention away from the mental prep required to finish a novel toward the actual writing of our novel, many questions open up about “the best” place to start. With the idea itself? With planning the story out? With developing the main character?

Writers all have different processes for writing a novel, and I’m not about to say to you, “This is the best way.” Instead, I invite you to think of these next steps I lay out not so much as a linear checklist, but more like branches as you climb a tree. Sometimes, you might reach for your main character branch first, and others, mapping out the storyworld. Different stories come together in different ways.

Here’s an overview of my typical path to a finished novel so you can get an idea for where this series is headed. While I’m going to lay the steps out in the order I usually follow, try to not get too hung up on the idea of first, second, third, etc.

Story Spark

That exciting moment happens where a bit of a story idea finds its way to me. I start making notes anywhere from a sentence or two to pages of thoughts of what this story might be.

Previous posts on this topic: From Story Spark to Story Blurb

Develop core sentence and blurb

When I feel like the idea has enough meat to sustain an entire novel, I work to distill the idea into one core sentence and blurb. If I’m writing a historical novel, there’s typically research around this step too.

Previous posts on this topic: How to Describe Your Book So People Want To Read It, and How To Write Compelling Back-Cover Copy

Write a chapter or two

As I talked about in my first post, beginnings are my happy place. I find I can’t map out a story very well unless I’ve written actual story words.

Write a synopsis

I’ve talked about this multiple times on Go Teen Writers, but as a pre-published writer, I loathed synopses. (And core/hook sentences, and blurby paragraphs.) I used to put them off until the very end when I had to have them for pitching at conferences or submitting to agents.

Once I was published and could mostly sell a book just with three chapters and a synopsis, I had to bump them up in my order of operations. And I found that I enjoyed writing all three of those pieces (hook, blurb, and synopsis) much more when I hadn’t yet written the book. As a bonus, I found the planning—or brainstorming if that’s a less scary word for you—paid off as I wrote the first draft. I definitely strayed from my original outline, but having a sense of where the story could go really helped me to steer the narrative along.

As a side note, I used to think that plotting out a story didn’t work for me because I always threw away my outline after chapter two when I veered wildly. After that, I was kinda snooty about being an organic writer. But as I shifted to writing synopses first, I realized that just like I had to learn how to write a first draft, or edit a book, or craft a synopsis, I also had to learn how to effectively plan a novel. That’s why my early attempts fell short, because it was also a skill I needed to practice!

Previous posts on this topic: How To Write A Synopsis, Organizing What I’ve Discovered Into A Working Synopsis (Shan), and Writing a Synopsis – Jill’s Method (Jill … not surprisingly)

Write my first draft

Usually the writing happens in 1k to 2k chunks. Sometimes I have to pause writing to do more research. Sometimes I go on a writing retreat and crank out 10k a day. There’s no right or wrong amount of time for writing a first draft. As Emily P. Freeman says, “Your pace is your pace.” There’s nothing amazing about being a fast writer or a slow writer. You are who you are.

I’ve noticed a few milestones I tend to hit in a first draft:

  • My dip in enthusiasm around the 33% mark of the story.
  • Panic that sets in around the 60% – 75% mark where I think, “This is a big mess that’s never going to come together.”
  • Realization that my draft is coming in shorter than I thought it would, and I decide to plow on anyway. Usually that happens around the 80% mark.

The more first drafts you write, the more you’ll notice your own personal milestones.

Take a break

If I can, I like to take off six weeks between finishing a first draft and beginning edits. These days, however, my break time is usually determined by my kids’ school schedule.

Previous posts on this topic: Six Reasons To Take Six Weeks Off From Your First Draft

Read through the manuscript

After my time away (hopefully six weeks, but maybe just one) I load my manuscript onto my Kindle and read with a notepad handy. I’m looking—in broad terms—for what’s working and what’s not.

Editing is its own skill. The more first drafts you edit, the better you get at identifying the answers to those questions.

Organize my list of what needs changing

After I’ve made all my notes from my read-through, I organize my list by biggest changes to smaller changes.

This is also when I get serious about filling out my story workbook, writing character journals, or researching plot-critical details. Maybe you’ll prefer doing that as you write the first draft. Again, these are more like branches as we climb a tree, not an orderly to-do list.

Work on big changes

By big changes, I mean adding scenes or chapters, cutting characters, etc. Even though it means working out of order, I like to take care of those things first so that when I go back through and do the scene-by-scene edits, I can weave in those big changes that I know are coming.

Scene by scene edit

I have a whole list of questions I work through for each scene as I decide what changes need to be made. This part of the process is long for me, and my word count always goes up as I edit.

Previous posts on this topic: Questions to Ask When Editing Scenes, How To Craft High Impact Scenes For Your Novel

One more read-through

Once I’ve worked all the way through the book, I start at the beginning and make tweaks. If I have time, I love to have my computer read the book to me. That’s when I catch the most repetitive words or overused phrases.

Send my draft to writing friends for critique

Depending on how much time I have, I send my draft to Jill and Shannon, as well as my friend, Roseanna. I enjoy a break from the book while they read, and their feedback is always useful and invigorating. I make nearly all the changes they send me, especially when they agree with each other.

Previous post on this topic: Preparing to Get Your Manuscript Critiqued

Send the book to my agent and/or my editor

Now I’ve taken the story as far as I can on my own, and I’m “finished” until my editor gets back to me with changes.

So, that’s an oversimplified look at my process and where this series will go from here. I’ve written about almost all these topics at some point in the 10 years of Go Teen Writers’ existence, so you can search the archives if there’s something in particular you don’t want to wait to learn about!

Have you finished a first draft before? Finished editing? I’d love to know how far you’ve gotten in the process!

Read the next post in this series: How To Start Your Story Right