Lessons From November

I spent most of November participating in National Novel Writing Month, or nanowrimo for short. I managed to complete the required 50,000 words with two days to spare, though I estimate that I have at least another 20,000 words to go before the novel is finished. The most surprising thing is that I have a novel that I think is worth finishing. I thought by the end of the month I'd have a useless pile of verbose unrelated sentences compiled into chapters of nonsense. If I had written the novel I planned that is what I'd have.

Fortunately, after two days of writing, I accidentally started a sub-plot. That worked so well I started another, then another, to the point where my imagined marathon or pretentious ramblings evolved into a compilation of intersecting story lines. Each tangent proving more interesting than the last. Now, with the bulk of the novel done, the only story line I'm not satisfied with is the first one, my original idea.

I learned many lessons about myself and my writing during this process. The main ones are:

I need to write every day

Well, not quite every day. After nine or ten days straight I get a little burned out and productivity wanes. I find that if I write five days a week I'm able to keep the thought process and creative juices flowing. In the past I've written sporadically, thinking about scenes for days or weeks before finally setting them to paper. This method has created scenes less in need of reworking, but also left me with far less scenes. By letting go the need for perfection, which I now realize is impossible in a first draft anyway, my mind is freed to spit out the story and get on with it.

Multiple story lines

In the past I have always tried to write out one complete story line before starting the next, assuming that the sub-plots needed the major plot to be in place to maintain the structure. What I find instead is that the sub-plots have much more influence on the main story than expected. So by writing all the story lines, in almost chronological order, I'm able to weave a much more organic structure.

On a more practical note, I find that in a single writing session I'm good for a single plot point per story line. Anything more than that and the writing becomes forced and pretty mundane. With multiple story lines though, I able to move to another sub-plot and keep writing. In draft form, a single plot point for three story lines works out to be two to three thousand words, which is a nice word count for a three hour writing session.

Outlining on the fly

I hate outlining because I become a slave to the outline, spending all my writing effort on making my scenes and characters fit the outline rather than exploring where they want to go and seeing what they can reveal. In the other hand, if I work entirely without an outline the stories wander off into a nowhere land of stuff that nobody would want to read. Fortunately, with this novel, I discovered pretty early that the story takes place over six days, plus a seventh for an epilogue, so I would map out where each story line would go for a single day, then write that day. As I wrote I would adjust the outline as needed. Then when a day was written, I would do the next day's outline. Of course for day six, being the climax, has some built-in structure towards which the story lines must aim, but while the final conflict is in place, the conclusions of the story lines are still unknown. Pulling this off will be what makes the novel work or not.

So that's what I've learned. Turns out I knew a lot less about writing a novel than I thought.