You Can Change It Later

Today’s post is in the spirit of silliness and making people feel better about their writing. These are all problems that you may or may not find in my first draft.

Your Main Character’s love interest morphs from the nice, helpful guy you planned into a weird, over-controlling pervert with an eye twitch.

That’s OK! You can change it later.

Your Main Character has absolutely no reaction to major, life changing events because you’re too busy writing the rest of the scene and keeping all the details straight.

That’s okay. You can change it later.

One of the Bad Guys is obviously NOT a Bad Guy, but your Main Character doesn’t realize this simply because YOU TOLD HER NOT TO.

That’s okay. You can change it later.

Your main characters makes no decisions and just lets stuff happen to them like they’re on a roller coaster.

That’s okay. You can change it later.

Your Main Character has one of three reactions: smiling, sighing or feeling sick to her stomach.

That’s okay. You can change it later.

Your book is getting too long so you cut it short, but the ending isn’t really there anymore.

That’s okay. You can change it later.

You describe minute details of the characters life like the smell of soap in the bathroom, and how they brush their hair, and put their clothes on, and end the scenes/chapters with them going to bed for the night.

That’s okay. You can change it later.

Your scenes have no Objective, Obstacle, or Outcome because you didn’t know they were supposed to.

That’s okay. You can change it later.

Your Main Character has no motive and sometimes just decides to do stuff because that’s what the plot calls for. (Wait, when did someone give them the script?)

That’s okay. You can change it later.

Your Main Character comes to conclusions right on the spot that should take a long time of reflection and are based on the concepts from your first year Psych course, (which your MC never took).

That’s okay. You can change it later.

Your Main Character conveniently finds passages, letters, maps, as well as overhears conversations so that the plot can work.

That’s okay. You can change it later.

And finally, as well as possibly worse of all, the MC and friend’s plans towards the end of the novel are far-fetched and ridden with holes, but they get away anyway due to lucky circumstances. (Hero has to win, right?)

Say it with me, everybody! That’s OK! You can change it later.

That’s all I can think of. (Like that’s not enough, right?)

How about you? What problems may or may occur in your first drafts?

What's Your Process Blogfest!

As we all (hopefully) know, today is the What’s Your Process Blogfest! over at Shallee’s blog Life, the Universe, and Writing. If you just found out, I’m sure it’s not too late to sign up and share your process.

Shallee mentioned some fancy ways to use Word (which probably aren’t really that fancy, but I still hadn’t heard about them until today. Useful stuff!) I’ve only written one first draft so I’m definitely not an expert, but I’ll still let you know how I went about it.

Firstly, I thought I would be a pantser, but it turned out I’m a plotter. A relatively detailed plotter. Either that, or maybe it’s the fact that I write so much slower than I plot that by the third chapter I had a detailed plot. Which worked for me, because something about not knowing how the novel would end, or what will happen next, or if it will all turn out okay made me really anxious and paralyzed my writing, so I had to figure it out before I could go on.

Abby Annis wrote a post about using post-its to help plan your chapters so I started out doing that, but the sticky notes kept falling off my dresser, and I moved onto fancier technology—PowerPoint. Very handy. I recommend it. You can move your slides around, and add new ones wherever you need them, and they don’t get lost under your dresser.

So after I transferred my sticky notes to PowerPoint slides, I arranged them around to my satisfaction. Each slide was a scene, and I moved them around till I got chapters. I found it really helpful to be able to see all the slides in front of me so I could “read” though my novel in a few minutes and check for pacing, and whether I’m missing something, and make sure there’s enough variety between the types of scenes (not too many action scenes right beside each other because they desensitize the reader, and not too many non-action scenes because they lead to snoozing).

As for how I actually write, I usually don’t write linearly because it becomes tedious for me. But I do write semi-linearly, as in I write up to a point, skip forward to write one or two scenes, and then come back to that first point, and continue. Writing a scene towards the end of the novel sometimes helps with fleshing scenes that happen earlier, especially if you need to add detail or foreshadowing to those earlier scenes. (If you already know what the later scenes sound like, it’s easy to slip in a few things here and there when you go back to write the earlier scenes.)

And that’s how I wrote my first draft. It’s at about 95,000 words right now, and I’m revising it, and trying not to freak out because it feels like it’s going to be just as difficult as writing it from scratch.

How about you? Is your process similar? Any revision tips are greatly appreciated : ) I look forward to reading everybody else’s entries!