How I Wrote A Book in a Month
I did something in July I never thought I could do. I wrote a book in a month. Here’s part of my process:
I’m a plotter. That means I like to see the whole story played out from beginning to end. I even go so far as to map out chapters, because especially for thrillers, it’s nice to know how those endings are going to pack a punch and keep the reader engaged. I use Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat beat sheets (you can Google it) to get the important pieces in place.
I push through. I’m not a writer who waits for inspiration to strike or if I’m in the mood. I have a pretty strict schedule of times I write in the day. This is broken into three sections: morning, afternoon, and night. I find having the chunks helps me use my time wisely, and since I plan it before most of my family has woken up or after they’ve gone to bed, I don’t feel like I’m sacrificing time with them.
I keep pushing. There were times when I knew something wasn’t right with my scene or chapter. As much as possible, I kept moving forward and just made notes to myself about things to address in the future. This means I have comments like, “BUT SERIOUSLY, HOW DOES HE DIE? FIGURE THIS OUT” sprinkled into the manuscript. At one point, I did stop and rewrite about 2k words because I’d dropped clues in the wrong places and needed to reroute things. For the most part, I just accepted this draft would be bad, and I kept going anyway.
I don’t stop to think of details. I use placeholders all over. Sentences read like “GUY from TOWN is coming.” The point is I don’t have to worry about slowing down to find a name. I’m simply getting the story on the page. This is also why many of my scenes end up being interiority of the character’s thoughts or straight dialogue. I almost always forget about setting details in this stage. It’s not an intentional choice; it’s because those pieces are hard, so I blow past them.
I’m a skinny drafter. From beginning to end, my manuscript was 45k words. For perspective, Silent Sister tapped out at around 78k at the end. But 45k is the longest first draft I’ve ever had, and I credit that to actually knowing the beats pretty well this time. I don’t know that I could write a 100k word fantasy novel in a month.
I use the zero draft. Even though I’ve been referring to this as my “first draft” in this blog post, in my head, this was actually a zero draft—a step even before the first draft. Some writers refer to it as “telling myself the story.” It was so bad, with so many holes and bare bones and non-linear character motivations, that I never would have been able to show another reader. But it was done in nineteen days, and that’s what I needed.
I let it sit. Ha! Normally this step should take about two weeks, but I gave myself two days. In this time, I read Save the Cat Writes a YA Novel which was conveniently released the day I finished my zero draft. I knew most of the information in that book, but re-reading the beats with this story in mind was a monumental help. I saw what pieces needed to be shifted around and moved in the next pass. I was also reminded of another plotting technique: the 8 episode arc. If I took my beats and chapters, and placed them into eight TV episodes, would the show be engaging? Would I have exciting endings to make the audience tune in next week? Which characters would be totally absent from an episode? How could I bring them in? This really helped shape the next stage.
The real first draft. I’m cleaning it up…a bit. I have some scene setting, some action beats, but many of them are repetitive and boring. I’m bridging character motivations from the end of one chapter to the beginning of another. I’m filling in all those names I left blank before (thank you, Scrivener’s name generator). I’m preparing it to be readable…but yes, it is still laughable. I’m on pace to finish this stage in the next few days, and it will probably end around 52k words.
This will be the end of my real first draft, something that can at least be read by other people. From here, I’m hoping that my loving critique partners will be able to read it and point out all my flaws—places I skipped the setting, or motivations that are only concrete in my head, not the page. They’ll likely have theories of who they suspect is the killer, and when they’re wrong, I’ll know where to lean in for red herrings or new sub plots.
I used to think a book was written from beginning to end, one chapter polished and proofread before the next. The truth is, I’m likely to tear out a lot of what I’ve written, so if I slowed down to describe the setting, it would end up in the trash anyway.
