Day 4: Messy and Out of Order

I’d like to share two thoughts today:

First, remember your working on a first draft. That means it’s going to be messy, contradictory, redundant, clumsy, vague, convoluted, and at least slightly embarrassing. Like a colt that hasn’t quite grown into its legs yet or a jigsaw puzzle that’s only been half completed. This is only natural, it’s even to be expected. To anyone else this first draft will likely be completely incomprehensible. But not to you, at least we hope not to you. The first draft is your first look at what your book will be like. The tangible outline of the story you’ve lived with for who knows how long.

It doesn’t matter if you change something half way through: make a note of it and fix it later. Don’t have a name for a character yet? Nickname them or use an abbreviation for their role in the story (I actually did that with my first NaNo novel, they still don’t have names.) Don’t worry if you don’t do much describing, or if you do too much, you can fix it later when you have a better idea of what needs to be shown.

This month isn’t about beautiful prose as much as it’s about the story. That doesn’t mean that you won’t write a perfect sentence or a beautiful description; or that you shouldn’t try and find the right words for that death scene you’ve always wanted to write. It just means that it’s alright if you don’t. It’s alright if you’re using the same word over and over. Or if you leave out whole sections of description because you don’t know a thing about castles and don’t have the time to research it right now. That’s okay, just get what you can out there where you can see it and don’t worry about the rest.

This leads me to my second note; namely nonlinear writing. Basically if you have an idea for something that happens later in the story write it. Want to delve into something that happens before your story starts? Write it. Feel like writing the end first? Go ahead. It might mean that these passages are a little disjointed or out of line. It might even mean writing something that you’ll just end up cutting out later. Do it anyway. Even if the text its self is never used you’re still developing ideas and finding out more about your characters. This can also help you fight writers block, if you don’t know what comes immediately after what you just wrote then see what happens down the line, you can connect the dots later. This may not work so well if your ‘pantsing’ it and don’t have a clue where the story is going but you could try it in reverse, write about your characters past or something that happened in the house they’re staying at: Anything that could help you find out more about your world.

Just have fun with it; there are no hard and fast rules for writing a story. This one’s yours, make your own rules: then break them.

— Rita