I took last week off from my day job, mostly in order to decompress from the busy season, but as long as I was going to be at loose ends, I figured I should make some sort of plan.
I decided to finish the book I’ve been working on for the last two years.
So, you know, not really decompressing.
I had about 10,000 words left to write, and I figured if I wrote about 2,000 words per day, I should be able to finish the whole thing in five days or so. This was a pretty ambitious goal for me, considering my highest daily word count prior to that had been about 1,500. On an average day, trying to write after work (if I don’t have any errands to do or too much housework that needs attention), I can maybe hit 500 words if things are going really well. 200-300 is more likely. So 2,000 was really pushing myself.
Well, two of the chapters I had left wound up getting condensed into each other, and two of them were sort of wrap-up chapters that didn’t need a whole lot of words to get their point across, so it wound up being 8,000 words or so total. But I hit that damn 2,000 word per day goal, I surpassed that 2,000 word per day goal, and I finished four days sooner than I thought I might. So I did get a little decompressing in, after all.
After every book, I learn something about myself and about my process. My “process” is not a set-in-stone thing that I just know and know how to do. The book I just finished is only my sixth, so I’m still very much growing and developing.
What I learned this time is that I’m not making the best use of tools I uncovered on previous books that I could be. I need to streamline a little more.
I recently discovered an outlining template that is, frankly, brilliant and makes perfect sense to me. If you’re interested in this kind of thing, you can find the article that contains the template here.
What I love about this template is that it breaks each story down into its component acts, it details what progress and setbacks the main character should be making in each act, and how many scenes each act should roughly be comprised of. The authors explain that it is a guide only, and that certain scenes will make sense to be condensed or expanded depending on the story.
I also love that it breaks stories down into 4 acts. Before I did my deep dig into story structure, I kept hearing and finding articles about 3 act structure. I also kept reading articles about the “soggy middle” of writing stories. When breaking story down into a 3 act structure, it’s easy to know what the beginning should be, and easy to know what the end should be, but the middle appears to be a total mystery. Breaking the story into 4 acts eliminates the “soggy middle.” Each act has a function, a point that it needs to drive towards, and events that need to happen. I literally read one article that said the beginning should introduce your characters and conflict, the end should bring the conflict to a head and close it in a satisfying but unexpected way, and the middle was “everything else” that happens in the story. “Everything else?” Well, what is that supposed to be?? Tea and crumpets? Philosophical discussion? Fights?
Anyhow.
Another deeply helpful thing that I discovered is a writing guide called The Story Grid. Now, I’m super mad about the book the author dissects to illustrate his points, but the points are super duper useful and very very good. (The book was Silence of the Lambs, and I don’t read horror, so I didn’t know what the book was really about until Story Grid dissected it for me, and the ending made me so angry I wanted to spit. But different strokes for different folks and all that.)
I love The Story Grid because it focuses on the action, the development of the story and the characters, and what each individual scene must do. The author says use whatever act structure you like, but don’t get too married to each act. Worry more about emotional tone and rising action.
Between these two resources, and some instinctive storytelling I’ve picked up from reading a ton, I have my method.
I wrote my dark faerie story, A Dark and Twisting Road in about 9 months. It’s the biggest book I have, weighing in at about 125,000 words. How I got that speed up was this: I wrote every day, even if it was only a sentence or two. I had a vague outline for the book (before I discovered the template), and before I would write any scene, I would decide what emotions I wanted to convey to the reader, then plot out a scene that I felt would illustrate that emotion. That was it. If I plotted a scene, or uncovered an emotion I wanted to show, I hit “save” on my computer and packed it up for the day. If I started a scene, any words added counted. As soon as I hit a mental wall, I saved and shut down. Even if the mental wall was there before I started. I would bring my file up, add any words, even just “I don’t know where to go from here, maybe to Hell,” and save and shut down.
With this book that I just finished, I lost a lot of momentum. With my last three books, actually. And I’ve been trying to figure out why.
I think I figured it as I finished this book up. (Ya know, AFTER writing three books at a limping speed and wondering what the hell I’m doing wrong. Ugh.)
I need to write every day, even if it’s just “I don’t know where to go from here.” I need to have the emotional tone of my scenes figured out in advance. I need to have a good solid act-by-act, scene-by-scene outline, and I need to fill in details of each scene right before I write it, including emotional tone. That way I have the wiggle room to change the story as I write it, but I have a road map heading towards where I want to send it. And the emotional tone of each scene is so incredibly, deeply important — the only thing that we as novelists really have to sell is our emotions.
So that’s my insight. I finished a book at a slower pace than I really wanted to, and despite everything I tried to speed that process up, it still took me two years to get it to rough draft status. I think I know what I did differently, and I think I know what I need to do to get a book out faster next time.
I have a lot of books I want to write, and I’m going to die someday, so let’s hope I’m right.
