Writing The First Draft

Who, What, When, Where, Why? Every journalist and journalism student has those five questions burned into their brains. A reporter tries to answer the five Ws within the first paragraph or two.

Before you start writing your novel, it is my firm opinion that you need to have at least a general idea of what the story is (plot), who’s in it (characters), and the world in which it takes place (world-building).

Writing the first draft has always been the most grueling part of writing a novel for me. Always one to attack my challenges head on, however, I used to set an ambitious daily minimal quota for myself, counting out how many clean, carefully thought-out pages I would need to write each day in order to finish a 400-page manuscript and still give myself enough time to revise it before my deadline.

The first draft typically took me a arduous five months; I would then spend the final three or four months of my allotted time revising and polishing the manuscript.

But things never seemed to go according to plan.

Go for it!

Nobody is born published. Not even the Nobel prize winners!

Too many workshops give the impression that writing should be a formulaic, paint-by-the number activity. If we were to guess, we would say that most novelists have had at least one book fall apart, or they realize the story they intended to write is taking an entirely new direction.

Just when you think you know your characters, your hero hops in bed with the other woman and shoots the heroine when she catches him. Bang! Slam! Bam! Your perfect romance has come to a screeching halt. What do you, the author, do?

So, you’ve always wanted to write a novel. Or maybe you’ve got to write a novel fast to meet a deadline. Novice or beginner, you are faced with where, how? The following steps are a guideline.

The book has to end happy.

The last chapter has to end happy.

The others? They don't.

In fact, they shouldn't. Because a chapter that ends with everything happy is a great reason to put down the book with a sigh of contentment, turn out the light and go to sleep.

So how should a chapter end? For that matter, how should every scene end?

There are about as many ways to write a novel as there are writers. Some plot extensively, some write with no idea where the story is going at all. Some use story boards or index cards or even dartboards.

I write multiple drafts.

This is not another article on how to plot your book or get into your character’s heads. Those are both important and necessary goals, but how YOU get there may have nothing to do with GMC, extensive character interviews, or breaking down your ideas into scenes and sequels. During a recent ‘Chat with Susan Anderson and Caroline Cross,’ Caroline made the comment that writing is about learning the process that works for you and taking ownership of it. Her comment sparked with some thoughts I’d been having lately about the process of writing.