Writing A Novel – The Process

I’ve always enjoyed reading about the processes authors use for creating their work. So, for anyone with a similar interest, I thought I’d document mine.

Roughly speaking, there are two major camps.

One group creates detailed outlines of the many scenes comprising a book. They then use the outline to guide the creation of the store. These are the Outliners.

Others essentially sit down, with some idea of the story arc in mind — but no detailed outline — and start writing. This group is typically called “Pantsers,” as they write where the plot moves them, by the seat of their pants.

I’m not sure anyone fits perfectly in just one of these categories. If I had to pick one to describe my process, though, I’d say I am a “Pantser” more than an “Outliner.” That’s simply the style of writing that works best for me.

I’m not a perfect fit, however. I wrote a synopsis of a few pages outlining the major plot points of the series, and then roughly 1000 words adding in the detail for each novel. That forces me to ensure there’s consistency of plot and that the major details that are defined don’t contradict each other. I’m not particularly worried about hair color, eye color, favorite foods, or interesting stories from childhood at this point, unless any of these are especially critical to the overall plot of the novel or series. To some degree, a synopsis acts like a high level outline of the story; it simply doesn’t have every detail, interaction, or speaking part documented ahead of time.

The first phase for me after this small bit of planning is writing the first draft. I wrote the initial draft of A Question of Will in less than three weeks. As I was writing, I knew the key plot points via the synopsis, and had a general idea of how I’d get there. I didn’t concern myself with details before I wrote a scene simply because I didn’t know what the story would need without first telling it. In some cases, I’d just leave a small bit of placeholder text that I could go back and assess at a later stage, or a basic sentence rather than several paragraphs to explain a new concept or character.

As I write, I keep a list of items to address in a first round of edits as I think of them. I didn’t go back and fix anything until I finished the end of the last chapter, though. When I write, I don’t let myself use the backspace key, the left arrow key, or the up arrow key. When I write, I simply write; I don’t edit. I add the idea to my list and continue forward until the draft is completed.

The second phase involves what I think of as content editing. This is working through the first draft, adding in the ideas I’ve noted, and electing to embellish or simplify text as appropriate to keep the story moving. Unlike most rounds of editing people see, my expectation is that my word count will go up during this phase, rather than down. My first draft of Will ran about 86,000 words, and during content editing, the total count jumped over 100,000. I expect that my increases in word count during the phase will be less-pronounced in subsequent books, as I continue to learn the writing craft.

The third phase is what I think of as polishing. While I tend to do a bit of this during content editing, my focus in this phase is solely on making each sentence and paragraph use just the right combination of words. Slashing extra adjectives, eliminating “tell” sentences, and generally streamlining the text — those are the goals of the polishing phase. My expectation in this phase is that word count will drop, possibly by a large amount.

The final phase is what I call proofreading. This is checking for correct grammar, verb tense, punctuation, and spelling. That includes finding correctly spelled words that spell-check will ignore, but which make no sense in the context of the sentence.

When the final phase is done, I have a novel that’s complete on content, free of grammar, spelling, and punctuation errors, and tells the story in a crisp fashion. In other words, it’s ready to publish.

That’s how it works today. I plan to be writing for a long time, and I hope that I’ll continue to grow and improve as a writer, and that growth may include altering the approach above, as I’ll learn each time I go through the process of turning a concept into a published novel.

If you are writing, or have written, a novel, what’s your writing approach?