In November I enjoyed a month of NaNoWriMo and reached my 50,000 word target. I was sailing away towards completing a first draft of a novel for the first time and could hardly contain my excitement. So what went wrong?
Sitting quietly on my hard drive is the novel. It's hardly progressed since December 1st and I'm worried that I'm falling out of love with it. Part of the problem is that I'm a pantser at heart and I just went with the flow. While this gave me a win at NaNo it hasn't helped at all with the subsequent writing. As I had no plan I don't know where the story is going. I have lots of threads meandering along but I don't know how I'm going to pull them all together.
Is it possible to do retrospective planning? Can I rescue this story from the fog?
I don't want to give up on this story. There is so much about it that I love, the characters are among the best I've written and I genuinely believe that there is a good story here. But... it's a bit lost at the moment and I'm feeling, well I'm not sure how I'm feeling about it actually.
Perhaps all I need is to pull up my Big Girl Pants and write the darn thing. After all isn't a first draft just a chance to tell the story? The fashioning and polishing happens in the edit so I'm told.
So what to do. Yet another dilemma for me on my journey as a writer.
You can do retrospective planning, but you will probably have to re-write it. It's not a bad thing though, as the skeleton of the story will be there and you can cut and paste chunks of it. I recommend the book by Larry Brooks - Story Engineering.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the advice. I think I'll probably plough on then see what I end up with. As they say, you can't edit no words! I'll check out that book too.
DeleteI have to re-write so much in editing that with a rough draft I just don't worry about how it sounds and just bang it out until I reach the end. There is nothing you can't fix, alter, cut, or re-write later.
ReplyDeleteI agree Brian. I'm sure the only way is to get it written and see what I end up with. Scary though, not knowing where I'm going ... or where I'll end up!
DeleteOh, I feel your pain. I have the very same problem if I don't plan. I'd say you only have two choices. 1. Carry on and see if your brain figures things out as you go along. 2. Sit down and plan and resign yourself to rewriting a lot.
ReplyDeleteSorry not to be able to offer advice that fixes it. I can't tell you how many stories I have written that followed this pattern. I'm a plotter now.
Thanks for that Suzanna! Nice to have someone with me as I dither. But I'm sure I just need to carry on and vow to plan properly next time.
DeleteI'm not sure who it was said 'writing is re-writing' but in my experience, they were on to something! The great thing about a bashed-out first draft is that it lets you know what you're interested in. You might need to stand back and squint a bit (if you know what I mean) but often you can look at a first draft and think, 'oh, that's what this is about!' And then you do your planning, and then you rewrite. I know that all probably sounds ridiculously time consuming, but I think it's the only way to get it right. And you can enjoy each stage of the process in a different way. Good luck!
ReplyDeleteThanks for replying Rebecca. I agree with you, I need to pump out the first draft then see if there is anything worth working on.
Delete