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
I do like seeing your process. So far, my process is looking a bit different. I’m more of a pantster, so I write whatever pops into my head. I finished two drafts in middle school, but neither of them was very well written, and they were incredibly short, so I never made it through edits. But if – no, when – I finish this book, I will write myself a plot and try to follow it throughout the editing process.
And there’s nothing wrong with being a pantser! When I was, my process started at “Write my first draft” but otherwise was the same. I still wrote synopses and back-cover blurbs, but I did that at the end.
I am just into my first draft. My book started as a short story idea. I sent it to my friends, who said it would make a good prologue to a story that would take place later. I reread it, agreed, and started mapping the plot out, writing the first couple chapters, and creating characters, (most of them just walked into scenes, actually,) coming up with a hook sentence, etc. Now I’m to the point where I feel like I need to REALLY start writing. So that’s what I’ll be working on next!
That’s so fun, Camille! I love that your friend was able to broaden your scope of what the story could be.
I love hearing about other writers processes. I was thinking the other day it’d be cool to see some of the first drafts of my favorite books. It’d fascinating to watch how it changed through edits.
For me, I’m still trying to figure out my pre-Writing & getting a complete first draft down.
Ooh, it would be so cool to see a favorite book in the first draft stage! It would be so eye-opening, and encouraging!
That would be awesome! Imagine Harry Potter’s first draft. Or Hunger Games. I did get to read a first draft of Kingdom Keepers – he released it in a newsletter a few years back, I think. The characters names were different! So weird.
Yes, I’ve thought the same thing! It’s very vulnerable to share those early drafts.
It really is. The thought of someone looking at the disasterpiece that is my book in its current state makes me so uncomfortable. Maybe when the book is finished and they can see what I was trying to do I’ll let people take a look at my early drafts and planning sheets. The process behind any creative effort is fascinating.
“Disasterpiece” I love that!!!
I once went to the Morgan Library in New York city with my English class, and they had a whole Tolkien exhibit with planning pages and sketches from the early stages of Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. It was so cool!
I’m currently editing my novel. Mainly I’ve been rewriting each chapter to fit with a list of big changes I want made, except I keep finding more big plot points I need to pin down, so the list keeps changing. It’s the first time I’ve ever really edited any draft of anything (though not the first time I’ve rewritten stuff…), so I’m just sort of bumbling along until I find a rhythm that works. I’m looking forward to seeing your process in depth so that, maybe, I can streamline mine.
Colin, mine has been streamlined after years of bumbling. Even now, it feels like I’m bumbling half the time! Creating is a messy endeavor.
I’m roughly 75% of the way through my rough draft. I drew inspiration from the tone/mood of a scene in a book I’d recently read, added my own context, and then ran with it until I had an all new scene with an all new premise and an ending that I still don’t know how I came up with. I wrote that scene out as my first chapter, then went through and drafted a rough outline of the book before writing the rest. I’d say I’m a combination plotter and pantser. I like having an idea of where to go, and if I get stuck, I stop and work it out in a separate notebook. However, sometimes, as I’m writing, I surprise myself, and I get to take the story in a whole new direction. That’s always fun.
I think one of my main problems is that I tried to write final draft level material right off the bat and overthought details that either don’t matter that much, or if they do matter, it wouldn’t kill me to gloss over it and come back to it in the edits. I’ve since adopted the “Just write it all now and worry about that part later” attitude. I find it helps to make a list of everything that I know I’ll need to change/adjust/elaborate on in the edits as I write the draft. If I can verbalize the problem and acknowledge that I WILL fix it later, it’s less overwhelming and I can move past it. I think it will also ease the editing process if I go in with an idea of what I need to do.
My goal is to be done drafting, start editing this summer, and be query-letter-ready by the time I graduate college (I’m a freshman now). Don’t know how realistic that is, but we’ll see.
“I think one of my main problems is that I tried to write final draft level material right off the bat and overthought details that either don’t matter that much, or if they do matter, it wouldn’t kill me to gloss over it and come back to it in the edits.”
This was a HUGE barrier for me early on. How great that you’ve recognized it and figured out how to push past!
I’ve been in the pre-writing stage for three years. I have a first chapter and many snippets written, and a very good understanding of the characters, but I’m lacking that special something necessary to really take off and start writing a bunch. I don’t know what that something is.
Hmm. That’s a long time to be pre-writing, Michaella. Is it tying a plot together? Do you struggle with perfectionism? I know that has really held me back sometimes. I also know that sometimes I just can’t get a good handle on a story, and I don’t know why. But I’m tempted to advise you to try out chapter two and just see what happens 🙂
I’m about 45% way through my first draft. My idea first came from a sort of fairy tale movie I watched about two years ago (I don’t remember the name of it), and I came up with a story spark for my own story. My story is way different than I imagined it in the beginning and I think I like it better the way I have it now.
For coming up with scenes, I sometimes act them out and this helps me for some reason. Does anyone else do this? I’m just wondering.
Also, thanks for the post. It had really great insight!
Oh my gosh I’ve totally acted out my scenes before! So so glad to know I”m not the only one.
Oh, that’s fun! I don’t usually act them out, but I often have the mental movie of a scene play out in my head.
It’s nice to know that I’m not the only one who acts out my scenes.
I also have a mental movie of how my scene will play out, most of the time.
Oh yes! I don’t usually stand and act them, but reading out loud is super helpful for me.
I’ve never actually acted out any scenes, but I do often say out loud in different voices what the characters would say before I even right it down. It seems to give the characters life, somehow.?