Many avid readers get the writing bug after reading a book that disappointed them. Maybe the entire book didn’t meet expectations, the characters fell flat, the plot wasn’t credible, and the list goes on. The last page is read and the reaction is “I could do so much better!”
Easy words to utter but to actually write a novel takes a lot more than being disgusted by something previously read.
So what does it take?
Inspiration
Just as it takes some kind of force to get a vehicle moving, it takes some kind of force to get a writer to put words down. Let’s called this a motivator.
The biggest motivator is Inspiration.
No, inspiration is not the only motivator but it is the most powerful motivator. Its power is not only in getting a writer to begin something, it’s what will keep the writer going because it gives the writer purpose. Each writer needs to find what inspires them.
My biggest inspiration came from grief. It served as a way to deal with the pain of losing my father and so the first novel I ever finished was about a character who lost her father.
I find less powerful inspiration everywhere and quite often when I’m not writing. In fact, that’s normally when inspiration hits me. Life, when it gets in the way of writing, teaches something that enriches writing.
Imagination
The grief I felt is what compelled me to start writing but before I put one word down, I was inspired with a story. About the only commonality I had with the main character was how the father died, the rest was pure imagination. What mattered most was that the story was interesting enough, to me, to write it down. Without loving the characters and plot I had imagined, I would never have started let alone gotten to the end.
And like it or not, to write fiction, one has to have some imagination.
Destination
I am not an advocate of an outline. I am an advocate of using whatever tools work for the writer, which may or may not include an outline. This is a personal choice.
My first novel didn’t have an outline. I jotted notes down that followed the scene I was currently writing, things I didn’t want to forget, which in a way, served to steer me toward a destination. Ultimately, to get to the end of a novel requires a destination to reach. Without that, the imagination has more difficulty focusing.
The destination can change along the way and there’s nothing wrong with that. For my first novel, I often wrote scenes for later in the story instead of sticking to where I was at, even scenes for a sequel. I rarely do that anymore. When I do, it serves as a fun exercise because I know the scene won’t fit when I get to it chronologically if I will even keep any of it. I’m lucky if I reuse a sentence.
Writing a scene too early is like writing out of context. Is the character still reeling from something that happened an hour, a day, a week, or a month before? Until details are written about what happened before, the scene can be lacking.
What may also happen is the story changed direction and the scene simply no longer fits and has to be scrapped or completely rewritten.
I now work from a very loose chronological outline. I use an Excel spreadsheet with the characters (major and minor) listed horizontally and the days listed vertically. With my destination in mind, normally some kind of event, I jot down a short description of what happens over the next bit of time in the appropriate cell then choose what scene(s) will come out of it. Scene details go under the character whose point of view I will write the scene in.
If a character becomes pregnant, I’ll jot down notes for that character throughout the calendar to track how far along she is and approximately when the baby is due. For books spanning multiple months or years, I will have a row per day quite far ahead so that I can put in those kinds of details. If a character is traveling, I’ll indicate a short note about where that character is in his travels and when he’s expected to reach his destination.
Sometimes, writing such details down sparks ideas.
My spreadsheet serves both as an outline and a tracking method. It helps me figure out which story line to focus on next. I never plan at that level of detail far from where I’m at in the story because as I write a scene, I often get hit with new ideas that make me change direction. If I outline the story to the end, I would have to update the outline from that point on.
This is what I do now but not what I did when I wrote my first novel. But it’s writing a first novel, then another, then another that a writer figures out what works for them. For that first novel, there are no rules to follow.
Perseverance
To finish a story takes perseverance. This can be extremely hard without the previous mentioned ingredients (inspiration, imagination, destination) and easier when they are in abundance.
But the first novel can also be difficult to finish even when the proper ingredients are present.
Perseverance can only work if a writer actually makes time to write. See my posts about Time and Time (Part Deux) for helpful hints on how to carve time out to write.
My first challenge when I began my first novel seem ridiculous now but they were things like how to punctuate dialogue, how to indent, and how to avoid a slew of he said/she said. Strange that after reading so many books that I found myself hesitating on where the comma goes in dialogue with respect to the quotation mark. I had never paid attention as a reader. I checked other books to figure that out. The first scene is where the first batch of learning takes place.
Next comes figuring out what point of view to use. I chose third person limited and ended up with two points of view as I had two main characters. For my first novel, this ended up an easy choice. I’m not even sure I consciously made this decision. This was not the case for my Auros world where I tried different types of points of views until I made a decision.
Routine
What I find works for me to write consistently is to do the same thing each time I sit down to write. I get emails out of the way, I take a quick look at my social media, then I open my support documents (outline, bible, etc.) and last, my manuscript. I navigate to where I left off. Word is great since it offers to navigate where the cursor was last and takes you there in one click.
Before I pick up where I left off, I reread what I wrote previously. If I wrote multiple scenes, I will read the last written one. If I stopped mid-scene, I will reread that until I get to the point where I stopped.
Normally, this is all I need to keep going, without the need to constantly check social media unless I need a break.
This is how I am now and is not what I did when I wrote my first novel. After stringing one scene after another and learning along the way a lot about writing, I eventually got to the end. It took me about seven years to finish my first novel but I did finish because I persevered.
Just Get to the End
For the first scene I wrote, I wasted time worrying about where commas and quotes went. At that rate, I wasn’t going to get to the end of my story very fast. There came a point where I just decided to tell the story swirling in my head.
I stopped caring about my writing style, and when I got to dialogue, I just wrote it out, not bothering with any he said/she said. I just got the story down and decided I would worry about my writing style later. What’s the point of having a perfect scene if I never get to the end?
I learned a lot about writing and perseverance just by finishing my first novel. By not caring about my writing style, I freed myself to focus on telling a story and get to the end. Just doing that, I realized that “I could do so much better” is not so easy after all.
But what a great feeling when I got to the end of my first novel. This is when I realized “I can do this”.
It doesn’t matter how long it takes to finish the first novel, months or years, it just matters that it gets finished. Because once you finish a first novel, you know you can do it again. And you’ll likely get there faster the next time.
At this point, it doesn’t matter if that first novel will ever see the light of day or if it’ll be revised five hundred times. The learning that took place from finishing that first novel is priceless.
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