Writing a novel

How do I book?

My apologies, writers, but this edition of Writer Therapy arrives a little later than usual. Apparently, I need to learn about scheduling downtime for myself.

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Dear Sonal,

Have you ever gotten stuck in plotting/planning/outlining purgatory? So caught up with trying to perfectly plan out your A-story, B-story, subplots, etc. that you feel paralyzed and unable to write?

I’m struggling to strike that balance between planning enough so I don’t have to completely rewrite after the first draft because so much is missing or out of order, but not so much that I feel forever stuck in outline mode.

I wrote about 25% and then got stuck once I moved to Act 2. So I went back to outlining. I read a book called [[REDACTED]], and I feel like it possibly did more harm than good. The author was a staunch advocate of the idea that a precise process of planning is the best and most effective way forward, and I’m finding that it’s draining not only life from the story but passion from my desire to write it.

I come from the world of flash and micro fiction where I would hold the arc and themes of the story in my head as I wrote. I think I'm trying to do that here, too. Hold the whole arc of the story in my head before I start it, and that's just proving impossible

Any advice?

Sincerely,
Would-Be Novelist

Dear Would-Be Novelist,

I purposely scheduled this for January, for all the people who have decided that this is the year they are going to write that novel. Some of them will make it through the draft. Many more will stop halfway and get muddled and frustrated and quit.

This makes it sound like novel writing requires a certain toughness, like it's the social Darwinism of writing and only the strong survive, but not so.

Rather, I think writing a novel—especially your first novel—requires a lot of faith in your own writing, because there will be a lot of points along the way where everything is a mess and you have no idea what you are writing anymore or if it makes any sense, let alone whether or not it’s any good or if anyone will want to read it. You will feel like you’ve done the whole thing wrong, and then the shoulds come out… you should have outlined, you should have learned more about story structure, you should have had a better idea in the first place.

The thing is, writing a novel is a lot like putting a wedding dress on a cat. That sense that everything is a massive mess, that everything you try makes it worse and perhaps this was a terrible idea to begin with is to be expected. And in the midst of that, you have to have faith that it will all work out in the end…. somehow.

In addition to faith, writing a novel requires a certain amount of sheer bloodymindedness to get through the first draft.

I say first draft, Would-Be Novelist, because I think the premise of your question is a big part of what tripped you up, that belief that through prudent and careful planning, you would not need to rewrite the whole thing later.

This is an understandable belief because certainly, it works for building a chair (measure twice, cut once as they say) but a novel is not a chair. You are almost certainly going to have to rewrite the novel after the first draft, and not because you failed to do everything right the first time around, but because that's just how novel writing goes. Even if you had a solid outline that was working for you, there’s usually too much to figure out and learn and explore about the story and the characters and the themes to work all of it out in one draft.

This is the point where someone pops up with a story about how they never need to do significant rewrites because of some foolproof process they use. This someone is either a) a liar, b) a shitty writer, c) an asshole, d) some wild exception to how most of us write novels and therefore cannot be relied upon for advice, or e) two or more of the above.

I know. You're stuck halfway up the mountain wondering what possessed you to climb this stupid thing, and now I’ve told you that once you reach the top, there is another mountain. This seems exhausting and pointless and makes you want to quit. Let me just say that every draft of my novel only got written due to my ability to convincingly lie to myself about why this was going to be the final draft.

So feel free to believe you are the exception. Who knows? Maybe you are.

But let's talk about planning, and also about getting stuck in the mucky middle, and maybe a bit about what novel writing looks like and how to figure out your own process, and why it's not like short stories, and maybe some random tangents.

Social media likes to divide writers into plotters and pantsers, or rather people who carefully outline and people who make shit up as they go along. There are some writers who outline in detail before starting, and others who write 100,000 words of crap and then try to figure out what on earth they were writing about.

The thing is, even writers who outline in detail will have those moments when they discover something new and sparkly as they write, and this requires them to re-plot and re-outline the novel as they learn more about this shiny new thing—it’s only an outline, you can change it anytime. And the writer who wrote 100,000 words of crap will eventually have to start arranging some scenes or ideas in some sort of order, with blank spaces in between to be filled in to connect everything.

To me, it's the same process, but done in different ways… Both are thinking through the novel, the story, the characters, etc., but one person does this in an outline and the other does it in scenes. Neither is wrong, but in both cases, there's still room left open for discovery, for surprise, for a little magic that will change everything they came up with before.

The problem many first-time novelists face with this is that the idea of outlining sounds so efficient, so logical, that it seems like surely this must be the correct way, and in walks in this very rules-and-order based logician setting out how the story ought to go, and carves it in stone, because it follows all the rules and makes perfect sense on paper and therefore you, the writer, dare not mess with it.

Suddenly all the colour and life gets sucked out of the writing process and the words just feel dead on the page. It's a bit like finding a partner to spend your life with; they may look perfect on paper, but if the magic isn't there, it doesn't work.

I have been there. I had a nice, neat, very logical outline for my novel which undoubtedly would make a very compelling story, but it was a struggle to write. My main character didn’t want to do what I had planned for her, so I kept having to insert details to force her to match the outline, and so none of it felt organic. A wiser writer would have realized that I needed to change the nice neat outline and listen to my character, but I am bloodymindedly stubborn, and also this was my MFA thesis and I was absolutely terrified that if I didn’t finish and graduate, I would be one of those women who put aside her dreams when she had kids and then never got back to them and lost herself. (That's a topic for another day). In any case, I used NaNoWriMo to help me keep moving on the draft, and wrote nearly all 50,000 words before I realized, during the climax scene, that no matter how perfect my outline seemed, the whole thing didn’t work. I wrapped up the novel anyway, since I was basically at the end, but I still had to rewrite it from scratch… and so was outlining everything so perfectly really that efficient?

Sure, some writers can and do stay in their creative flow while outlining, and can keep listening to the story and keep that perfectionist logician out. And certainly, I found having some milestones to write towards helped me stay focused and kept things moving… otherwise, I might end up writing thousands of words about, say, toenail fungus to make my word count because I would have no idea where to go next with it.

But on the other hand, sometimes we just need to noodle around in words about toenail fungus (or something!) before an idea sparks. Sometimes, it’s the act of writing words and words about nothing in particular that allows us to get into creative flow, and then opens up the next idea. Or who knows, perhaps toenail fungus has a bigger importance to the story than we realize.

Ultimately, figuring out how much you need to know about a story, or what specific things you need to know, and how you need to go about figuring these things out before starting a novel draft is highly individual, and it will probably vary from novel to novel. And this is the difficulty with first novels; you do not know yet how you, personally, write a novel.

Lucky writers wrote their first novels before encountering too much information about how you are supposed to write a novel, and got through it because they didn’t get too in their heads about doing it wrong, and probably found the process was mostly a joy—this allowed them to figure out a couple of things about what they need to know, and hopefully that gets them through their second novel, which may be less of a joy to write if they now know enough to get all in their heads about doing it wrong.

Perhaps it sounds like I’m anti-outline; I’m not, although personally I find the parts of the story that I know the least about at the outset always end up being the most interesting ones. But if outlining seems like a good route for you, remember that the outline is not etched in stone. Don’t feel like you must follow it, if the story and characters are taking you somewhere else.

At the other end of the spectrum, I suspect most writers would have a hard time sitting in front of a blank page with no ideas whatsoever, and then churn out thousands of words before finding some sort of novel in it.

Most of us need something in the middle to figure it out, and it will probably take some trial and error to figure out what works. But even if we overdo it on outlining, we can always throw that outline away and see the blank page brings out. There’s no wrong way to do this.

For writers like yourself, Would-Be Novelist, there’s some amount of drawing on our experiences in short story writing that can help us understand what we need to know, but generally, holding the complete arc and themes of the novel in our head is usually not one of them.

As much as some short stories can hold an entire novel’s worth of story in them (looking at you, Alice Munro) most of us didn’t win the Nobel Prize for our short stories, and ours are not written with that level of complexity. For novels, it’s generally not possible to consciously hold everything in our heads: the characters, the setting, the plot, the subplots, the themes, the imagery, what scene am I on again?, is this character still alive? did I reveal this information already and if I did does it completely contradict what I’m writing now?

And while it seems like writing all of that out on paper in a detailed outline might solve that problem… well, we went through that part already.

The thing is, even if you want to hold all of that consciously in your head while you write, you don’t need to. The story, and all of its themes and arcs and characters is already there; you need to trust that if you follow your instincts as a writer, that it will all end up on the page. Follow the energy, follow the sparks, follow the random moments, and when in doubt, choose the bravest option. Trust that it will all come out as it should. It will probably not all come out on the first draft… wait, no, we already agreed that you are the exception, it will all come out on the first draft, you will not need to rewrite the whole thing, just some quick easy edits and you’ll totally be done.

As very general advice: start with characters you know, start with the scenes you know need to be there, and hold everything very loosely until you finish the draft. Milestones are often helpful, but if you don’t know them yet, trust that they will get figured out. Knowing your characters well is also helpful, but don’t feel like you must mire yourself in character exercises before you are allowed to start writing; sometimes it’s better just to begin.

Write the entire draft to the end. Social media lately has been picking on the idea that writers need to write a novel straight through without going back to edit and change things, so let me just say, it’s totally okay to go back and change things. But it’s also easy to get stuck in a cycle of going back to fix things and fix things and fix things, or to start over and start over and start over until you have many beginnings but never get past the middle. If this describes you, stop going back to fix things, stop starting over and get through the middle any way you can.

Let it be messy. Let things be wildly inconsistent, let the loose ends dangle. If there is something you don’t know, but it’s easily figure out-able, make up the answer and figure it out later—this is especially true if answering the question would lead you down a research rabbit hole. Make a note of it separately if you must, but keep going. If you’re still trying to get the wedding dress over the cat’s head, you don’t need to worry about how the veil goes on.

Remember that you don’t have to write everything in order, start to finish, as long as you end up with a complete-ish draft in the end. If you are stuck on a scene, feel free to skip ahead and write a different one. It doesn’t matter if you don’t know how to get from point A to point B yet, trust that it will get worked out eventually. It’s okay to leave some blank spaces in the middle.

You will get stuck. You will end up in the mucky middle and not know where to go. This is normal. This happens to everyone. This is not a sign that you did something wrong. Don’t start over solely because you are stuck. Write a different scene. Write a loose placeholder note and move on. Freewrite about random things until you figure it out. Do some character work and figure out what the character wants to do next.

Perhaps you’re stuck because you have too many ideas and the story has spun out of control and you have no idea what to write next. Pick the one that has the most energy for you. If you don’t know what that is, pick anything. It’s entirely okay if you drop a bunch of ideas along the way, or if you pick only some of them up back up later on. That’s fixable, keep going.

Perhaps it’s not a story issue. Maybe you need to take a break, go for a walk, take in some restorative art, have a nap, talk to a friend. Maybe you need to bounce ideas off a writing friend until something sparks. Maybe you need someone to give you a confidence boost, that you are a good writer, and that you can write a novel, and that this story you are writing deserves to be told, by you, and it has a place in the world.

Perhaps, in your heart of hearts, you already know what needs to come next but you’re hoping that there’s another answer because you don’t want to write what come next. Maybe you’re afraid to write it because it’s a hard scene to write—maybe emotionally, maybe in terms of craft. Or maybe you are afraid that it’s a dumb idea, or that you’re not good enough to write it. Be brave and write it anyway. The scenes I am most afraid to write, even if it’s because I’m afraid it’s dumb or too hard, are often the ones where the magic happens.

Above all, trust your instincts and listen to the story. When in doubt, go back to the reasons why you started this novel in the first place—what was that little spark of an idea? Start from there and start writing and see what it tells you. Try different things until you figure out what works for you. Fears are normal, but don’t be ruled by them in your writing. There is no wrong way to write a novel, as long as it results in a novel.

Don’t worry about the next draft until you get there. Perhaps you really are the exception that gets the whole thing together in one draft. Perhaps you need a lot of drafts, because it that’s simply what it takes for you to learn how to write this novel. There’s no way to know what it will be at the outset.

But for now, write the draft, and once it is done, congratulate yourself on the huge accomplishment you have made in trusting yourself as a writer all the way from that tiny spark of an idea through the mucky middle to the end. You did it. You’re amazing. You have officially made this one dream come true.

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Novelists and other would-be novelists, what has worked for you? What has not worked for you? What do you do when you get stuck? Let’s share ideas and experiences in the comments.