One Simple Way You Can Make Your Next Book Better

by | Sep 25, 2013 | Uncategorized

by Stephanie Morrill

Stephanie writes young adult contemporary novels and is the creator of GoTeenWriters.com. Her novels include The Reinvention of Skylar Hoyt series (Revell) and The Revised Life of Ellie Sweet (Playlist). You can connect with her on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and check out samples of her work on her author website.

On Monday I talked about how after you finish writing your book, you have to decide if it’s a book you’re interested in publishing or if you want to shelve it and pursue another story idea. (There’s also the option of self-publishing, a writer brought up, which is true. For simplicity’s sake, I’ll focus on traditional publishing during this series. If you’re curious about my views on teens/new writers and self-publishing, you can read them here.)

Before I talk about agents and the pursuit of publication, though, I want to spend one more day camping out on the whole writing the next book part.

I’ve said this on here before, but as a young writer, I bounced from story to story quite a bit. If I was bored with one, I abandoned it for a new flashy idea. And when that one became boring, I did it again. I never stopped to figure out why a book idea felt boring or why I couldn’t seem to write much more than a chapter or two.

I didn’t grow as a writer until I became critical of my own process. When I mustered the courage to look at my failed stories and ask why they had failed. 

The first time I did this, I was 20. At that point, I had written five full novels and one half novel. (There had been countless partial manuscripts over the years as well, but these 5 1/2 are books that I had worked on much more than the others.) At age 20, I stepped back and tried to figure out why those stories felt flat, why the idea hadn’t produced a great book.

After some consideration, I noticed they were all stories about me. Not me me, but a variation of me and my life – what if that guy I once liked had actually liked me back? Or another, what if my parents moved me to this awful tiny town in Oklahoma that I hated visiting?

That was when I decided to write a book with a main character whowas completely different from me. The result was a really horrible draft of a book that (after a few complete rewrites) became my debut novel, Me, Just Different.

Because I had taken the time to evaluate what hadn’t worked in my old stories, I was able to fix the problem and achieve writing a bigger, better story. I now take time after every story to evaluate what worked and what didn’t.

Here’s an extremely brief summary of what I’ve learned during the last five years during my evaluation time:

The Reinvention of Skylar Hoyt series
This was the first series I had ever written. Even though I’m very pleased with how it turned out (and extremely grateful to my editors who helped me along the way) I could have made life easier on myself if I had:

  • Done some very basic plotting about how the characters would grow over the course of the series.
  • Kept a calendar of events. There were some serious continuity issues in those early drafts!
Before It Begins (unpublished)
Because of how crazy scary it had felt to write the Skylar Hoyt series with no outline, I tried to incorporate a bit of structure to this book. I wrote a synopsis early on and that worked really well for me. I’m sure this book has some problems, but it remains one of my favorite books I’ve written. I decided to always write synopses for my books as part of my brainstorming process.

The book that became The Revised Life of Ellie Sweet
But in the first draft Chase didn’t exist, Ellie wasn’t at a writer, and at the end she moved to Kansas so it can hardly be considered the same book.

Because I had already written part of this book before (only it was a adult contemporary novel) I ignored everything I had learned about writing a synopsis early on. This was a big mistake. (I was also pregnant with Connor, raising a 2-year-old, and promoting the Skylar books … so I’m not sure how clear headed I was at this point. I probably should have spent that writing time napping, now that I look back on it.)

When I finished writing this book, I decided that I needed to plot out novels. I went crazy with Randy Ingermanson’s famous Snowflake method. I had barely ever outlined and now I had charts and spreadsheets and pages and pages of notes when I tackled my next project, which was:
The Teenage Chef book that I never could title (unpublished, obviously)
When I finished writing this book, I decided that I was not a Snowflake method girl. About halfway through the book, I had given up all my spreadsheets that I had painstakingly made. I decided, “No, I’m not a plotter after all. I’m going to embrace my inner-pantser and I’m not going to plot books anymore!” Next I wrote:
The Girl In The Bookshop  (unpublished)
I had the best time writing this book. At first it was an idea I was just playing around with, and then I hit this big plot twist that I absolutely loved, and I wanted to write the whole thing. But I did NOT think this book through (I did not write a synopsis like I had once planned to do for every new book I wrote!) so there are some major plot holes that I need to fix. I decided that for my next book, I needed a wee bit more structure, and that I should try James Scott Bell’s method of plotting a few big scenes.

My Dystopian Book (unpublished and, sadly, abandoned)

Remember that first book I wrote after The Reinvention of Skylar Hoyt series? The one where I decided that I should write synopses for brainstorming purposes? Well, I finally remembered that and decided to apply it to this book. It was awesome. And because I had taken time to study structure after the previous book, I did a better job of making sure all the important story elements were in my synopsis and first draft. I like this method.

The Unlikely Debut of Ellie Sweet
This was the next full novel that I wrote after my dystopian. I used a method that I now hear referred to as sign post plotting, where I made a list of the big scenes in a book (Beginning, inciting incident, dream realized, etc.) and then made notes on the side about those scenes in the book. This worked very well for me, and I intend to do it for my next book.

After you evaluate what went well and what didn’t with your last manuscript, consider identifying a few new things you want to try on your next book. Like you could try using Jill’s scene plotting charts, or dedicate a week to brainstorming your story, or try out a different POV to tell the story. Trying new things will ensure that you’re a writer who gets better with each book.

What’s something you’ve tried that’s worked for your stories? What’s something you’ve tried that hasn’t?