Starting is easy. Finishing is hard. This is a series I wrote through most of 2020 due to questions we often get at Go Teen Writers about how to finish a novel. Finishing a novel is always hard work, even as a published professional, but it’s uniquely hard when you’ve never done it before. I hope this series helps you on your journey!
If you’re looking for something to take you deeper into this subject, Jill, Shannon, and I wrote Go Teen Writers: Write Your Novel for that very reason.
If you struggle more with editing than writing, Jill and I have you covered with our book Go Teen Writers: Edit Your Novel. This book will help you not just with edits but also with pitching or self-publishing for the first time.
The Beginning Writer’s Guide To Finishing Your Novel Complete Series:
If you want to get writing done, you have to figure out where in your life it’s going to fit! This post helps you identify a specific time and place for writing.
It isn’t enough to just make the room to write, you must actually write when you say you’re going to. This post helps you clear out distractions.
Post 3: Get Ready To Celebrate
How can you reward yourself for a job well done? How can you celebrate little successes, like hitting a daily word count, as well as big successes, like finishing a first draft?
Post 4: Overview of Beginning to End
This is a bird’s eye view of my process for writing a novel.
Post 5: How To Start Your Story “Right”
Pretty self-explanatory! Some questions to help you figure out what chapter one should look like.
There’s often soooo much focus on chapter one. What should chapter two look like?
Fortunately I was writing the beginning of a book as I worked on this series, and I remembered that it often takes a few attempts before a story gets off the ground. Creating can be chaotic and messy!
Getting stuck is part of the first draft process. Some thoughts on how to get you out of that pit!
I find it helpful to think of the middle as two halves. I explore that in this post.
Creating a big midpoint scene can help make the middle of your book feel solid. For further reading on this, I recommend James Scott Bell’s Write Your Novel From The Middle. Excellent teaching and very affordable on your e-reader.
I had much to say about the middle! This post is all about your character after the midpoint and urging them toward the climax of the book.
Oh, right! It’s not just about your main character!
Post 13: Transitioning from Act II to Act III
Time to get your character poised for all the fun that’s coming in act III!
Your character is in a sad, tight spot and they’ll need another character to come alongside them.
If you’re anything like me, endings are hard to write and you’ll be tempted to just go back and try to perfect the rest of the manuscript in hopes that the perfect ending will magically appear. I strongly encourage you to focus on writing an ending, even if it doesn’t end up being the ending.
Post 16: What If You Don’t Want To Finish?
A post in which I talk about robot horses that clean your room for you.
Post 17: Why You Shouldn’t Start Edits Yet
I’m a firm believer in taking time away from your manuscript before you start the editing process!
Post 18: How Do You Know If Your Book Is “Worth” Editing?
I attempt to answer this question…
In which I give you an overview of my process and how I don’t edit chronologically, but rather I prioritize “high impact” changes and work my way down to “low impact” changes.
Then I focused on each element of story and how to edit those:
Post 20: Fixing Character Issues
Post 21: Fixing Theme Problems
Post 23: Fixing Setting Problems
Post 24: Are You Ready To Micro Edit?
Now that you’ve taken care of those high-impact edits, you can go scene-by-scene and edit.
Post 25: Six Questions To Ask When Editing Scenes
Here are questions that I’ve found to be useful as I’m editing.
Post 26: A Checklist For Finalizing Your Novel
All those final things to take care of, like spell check, formatting, and sending the book to writer friends.