From Draft 1 to Draft 2 

Last week, I shared a little of how I get my first draft of a novel down. To summarize that post, I simply give myself a small writing goal: write ten chapters with at least five Word pages per chapter. That goal does what I expect of my Draft 1; it gets the skeleton of the story down. Draft 1’s purpose is simply for me to get my ideas down. It does not have to be any good. As long as I get the main scenes and characters in, I am in a good position. However, the next part can be quite frightening. I have somewhat of a love/hate relationship with the next part. I know that deep down inside, I love the shaping and molding of Draft 1 into Draft 2, but there is so much to it, that I don’t always find myself loving the process. I think it would be unfair and unrealistic for me to say that I completely love the next part.

I usually find that the next part seems just as painful as the first, and perhaps that is why I have conflicting emotions with it. When I look at Draft 1, it overwhelms me and just looks like a lot of words. For a moment, I just sit there, with a lot of word on a page. Now, I actually have something written, a story! Or at least, fragments of a story. I do not usually know what it is I have, but I have learned over the past couple of years that this is the step in my writing process that eventually allows me to make something out of my writing. Draft 2 usually scares me because so many insecurities come out of it. I always find myself doubting my abilities and my writing skills.

My shaping of Draft 1 into Draft 2 feels a lot like walking toward into the distance toward that light in the picture. I don’t know if it’s a good idea. Likewise, I don’t know while lay beyond in the fog. I have mentioned before that when I write, I kind of just let it flow and see where the characters take me. It is in this part of my editing that I have learned to split this monster up. The best way I have learned to do my editing is to first print out my entire Draft 1. I do not edit directly on my computer, not for this draft at least. This is one of the drafts that I will mark up, tear up, burn pages (if needed), write in more scenes, and have a little amount of breakdowns as possible. Needless to say, I don’t think anyone but me would be able to decipher my mess. That would be like trying to look into my brain, and I do not advise trying to do that.

Before beginning my editing, I also split up my novel on my computer. I create a new folder on computer, labeling it Draft 2, and then individually save each chapter in to that folder. The reason I do this is to facilitate my editing of the chapters.  That gives me a lot more to focus in on. Instead of looking at a stack of about one hundred pages, I now have five to ten Word pages to work with. I do this because it helps me slice the story into manageable pieces. It gives me something that I can actually work with. From there, the editing begins! I usually do a first read through the draft to see what I was trying to do. After reading it once through, I then start marking up awkward phrases, adding details, and if needed adding scenes.

With my first five to ten pages, I go through my process, trying to make some sense of my first chapter. My new goal is to get each page up to at least ten Word pages per chapter. That will double the amount of pages that I will have to work with in the end, and should give me a lot more to work with. However, that is the main reason this process usually takes so long. There is so much adding and moving around that it frustrates me at times. Usually after finalizing my hand editing, I jump right into the Word document and make the changes into the appropriate Word document in the Draft 2 folder. I follow this gruesome process for the entire Draft 2 until I edit the entire novel.

This is the madness that begins to shape my first draft of a novel. I tend to follow the same process in Draft 3 if needed and usually do not do the same for Draft 4. Once I get to Draft 4, I usually just do the editing directly on my computer. Once I get a novel to Draft 4, the story begins to look decent. In a jiff, that is my editing process. Now, that is how I edit my own novels. It may not be the best, and I think i create more work for myself, but currently that is the process that helps me get my thoughts together. I’m too scatter-brained and have to follow a certain process. This is my process. I would love to hear from other writers on how they manage to get their stories together. Let me know your process! I’m interested to hear for you guys!

Best Regards,

H. J.

How I tackle a novel

Making the decision to write a novel came to me a random night while taking a shower. I remember getting out of the shower and texting my friend.

I simply said, “I’m going to write a book.” Or something along those lines. The point is, my decision was impulsive and completely out of nowhere. I had just finished reading The Hunger Games at the time, and I recall telling myself that someone should write a book about “this” or “that.” During my shower is when it hit me that I could be that someone. That was the start of my writing journey, and it has not been an easy one.

The idea of writing a novel is something a lot of people dream of but never do so because they think they are simply not good enough. Allow me to share the very first piece of writing I did. I have kept this one piece of paper because it means so much to me. That very night I told my friend I was going to write a novel, I got out of the shower and wrote the following:

The typical high school day was anounced by the exruciating sound of the 6:30 alarm clock. As usual I snooze the alarm until my mom comes in screaming and busting down doors. It is then when I actually have a mind to get out of bed. To resume the day I arrive at school and search for my best friend. She usually never gets to school early so I always end up going to the cafeteria and having some breakfast with some of the soccer guys. “Haha, Jay you decided to get out of bed today bro!” jokes

I didn’t even finish the last thought. I stopped there and went to bed for some random reason. I told myself, “that’s enough for today. Leave some fun for tomorrow.”

As you can tell, that very first night I was not worried about punctuation, grammar, or spelling. I believe that my “naiveness” is what allowed me to continue writing, not caring how it sounded or what it looked like at the moment. My courage to just go for it and explore what I could do allowed me to shape myself into the writer I am today, and I am continuing to grow, learning from my mistakes and the success of other writers and published authors. Without that impulse to decide to just do it, I would not be writing this now.

There is a lot more to that story that I would like to share more and more of throughout the next blog posts, but the main idea here is that the first step into writing a novel is to just go for it. Don’t worry about length or about how good it is. That is why we have editing! Writing your First Draft will always be the hardest if you don’t decide to grab a piece of paper and write something. That is my first bit of advice for anyone wanting to write a novel: Just Go For It! Write the First Draft!

Now one may also think, “well it’s easy for you to just say that. Doing it though is a lot harder than you make it out to be.”

I get that. I understand. Think of it this way; I use this method to get a first draft done. I have a First Draft plan that I like to follow that I think anyone can do or shape to meet their own writing goals.

What I do is I plan to write 10 Chapters with each chapter being at least 5 Word pages long. By the time I finish doing this, I usually have over 50 Word pages and around 17,000 – 20,000 words. Now I know this is nowhere near the 75,000 to 90,000 length novel most of us want. However, it gives me a starting point. I decide to limit how much I write per chapters so that I can get the very basic structure of the novel down before doing anything else. This helps get the basics of the story down.

Let me be clear: THIS DRAFT SUCKS! It is by far the worst draft for any story I do. All first drafts are. It’s why they’re called First Drafts. It is the, “let me see what I’m trying to do” draft. I mean think about it, you’re trying to write a story that has never been told with characters you may not even fully know. It took me several drafts to really understand some of my characters. It’s part of the process. I didn’t even really have a grasp on the plot or the world I placed these characters in. You learn more of that as you edit. Even if you are the kind of writer that plans everything first before even writing, I’m sure you learn more and more about your characters and world as you write and edit.

Now I will admit that I am the kind of writer that doesn’t know where he’s going. I’m the kind that sits down before a blank page and sees where the story takes him. I know there are those who do not like to do that, and that is completely fine! We all have our ways of writing. Just remember that your First Draft is you getting your thoughts on paper. Don’t get bogged down by how good it is or by going back to check if your introduction is good enough. Doing so, is going to prevent you and even discourage you from getting anything else written.

This is the draft where I try to learn what it is I am trying to do and usually have to take a lot of notes about this draft to get Draft 2 in a better state. This has been my most successful way of getting a novel written. I do my first draft 10 chapters long with each chapter at least 5 Word pages. From there, I begin the editing and shaping of Draft 2.

Editing can be either really fun or it can feel like torture, depending on how you decide to look at it. I choose to see it as an opportunity to put my story puzzle pieces together to make some sense of what it is that I am trying to say. Draft 2 usually has a lot of marking out, re-writing, and chapter adding. It’s a mess and a scary process of it’s own. I will share more of that next week.

For now, just now that if you are an aspiring author there are a lot of us who know the struggle and are willing to lend a hand. Reach out to someone and ask them questions. I, for one, really enjoy sharing my writing struggles with others. It helps them understand that they are not the only ones. Also, if you are an aspiring author, I want to hear from you and how you take on Draft 1! Send me an email, leave a comment, or reach out to me through my Instagram or Twitter. I’m curious to hear for you!

Best Regards,

H. J.