Turning a First Draft into a Novel

November 29, 2007

Exhausted Writer I’ve got 50,000 words! What do I do with them???

I reached my 50,000 word count in NaNoWriMo and I’m proud of it. Writing 50,000 words about anything in a single month is quite an accomplishment. My schedule was packed, so I didn’t have as many hours to work on it as I would have liked. In all, I would say that I spent a mere 50 hours on my novel. That means I averaged 1000 words an hour or slightly less than 17 words a minute. That doesn’t account for the time I spent thinking about my novel the rest of the day, but it does account for all of the time I spent sitting in front of my computer with the word processor running and my novel in front of me.

I’m not really surprised at the speed at which I wrote. I once wrote a much more coherent 30,000 word novella over a weekend, so I know that I can churn out prose quickly when I really want to. That said, it doesn’t mean the novel is good yet, or even bad yet. At this point, it is merely a collection of 50,000 words about a set of characters. While I managed to give my story a beginning and an end, the story is far from finished. A quick assessment reveals the following problems:

The plot isn’t a plot so much as a series of semi-related events. I didn’t start with a clear plot outline, and it shows. Plan 9 From Outer Space has a more cohesive plot than my novel at this point.
Several of the characters do not have complete story arcs. They wander in and out of the story without any real resolution.
The character with the greatest number of pages and the most complete story was supposed to be a minor character.
My intended protagonist doesn’t feel real or interesting yet.
Two planned characters do not appear in the story at all
There are pages of dialog without any intervening action, narration or description.
There are more sex scenes than a late night movie on Cinemax. (Who knows, this may be a good thing)

I’m not listing these problems to get down on myself or the process. I expected that the output would be rough. It is a first draft, and a quickly written one at that. Parts of what I wrote are very appealing to me. Other parts feel more like filler or character exploration than a genuine part of the story. Some of the problems with my first draft are unique to my work, but most of the problems are universal. A first draft is a first draft. It is created to be revised. Even second and third drafts of novels are far from complete and perfect. That is why we revise. That is why we edit.

This brings up the question, where do we go from here? There are many methods for revision, but this is the one I plan to use.

Read the novel as it sits from start to finish while taking notes but not editing
Perform a “light edit” (spelling and grammar) on the novel
Reorder the novel so that it follows a chronology
Read the novel again while taking notes AND editing
Assemble a Style / Information Guide
Re-evaluate the novel and determine goals
Create a revised plot outline
Write new scenes
Revise old scenes
Edit with an eye toward continuity
Have someone I trust read and evaluate the novel
Go through the whole process again

For the month of December I will discuss all of these steps in greater detail. I might come up with a few more things along the way as well. I would love to hear what other participants (or anyone with a novel to revise) plan to do with their work.

Written by John Hewitt · Filed Under Editing, Fiction Writing, Writing · 19 Comments

Procopywriters.com Steals its Content

November 29, 2007

The rats at procopywriters.com/blog have been stealing my content, apparently for quite some time. They make it a practice to rerun other people’s blog posts in their entirety without permission. They’ve run many of my past month’s articles, which is absurd because I haven’t written anything about copywriting in a LONG time. In addition to poewar.com, these rats steal from:

freelanceswitch.com
poynteronline.org
copyblogger.com
dailywritingtips.com

If you frequent any of these sites, please make it a point to let them know their content is being stolen.

Update:

Based on conversations with the owner of the site (which appear in the comments of this post) my articles have been removed from the site. The site continues to run other author’s works without their permission and to insert advertisements into the text of other people’s work. Some other bloggers have been addressing this issue on their blogs. I am linking to their discussions so that anyone who is interested can see how other people have reacted to this.

Update (12/13/2007)

The “blog” portion of procopywriters.com appears to have been taken down. I don’t know what they plan to replace it with, if anything, but lets hope that it is a legitimate blog written by a real person (preferably paid for their efforts). Whatever the case, I hope that puts an end to this issue.

Written by John Hewitt · Filed Under Blogging, Writing, Writing Business · 60 Comments

NaNoWriMo Update — 50,000!

November 28, 2007

I’m not sure I would call it a novel yet. It seems more like a collection of random scenes, but nonetheless, I have hit my 50,000 work mark for NaNoWriMo! I officially have 50,049 words. I’ll discuss the experience more later, after I get some sleep.

Written by John Hewitt · Filed Under Writing · 10 Comments

Measuring Up

November 27, 2007

A while back, Michael Stelzner over at Writing White Papers started a comment-based contest to name the Top Ten Blogs for Writers. He has now posted his official list of nominees, which I have included below. I was happy to see that my blog made the initial cut and I thank those of you who nominated it. For the final vote, Michael is planning to judge the blogs based on the following criteria.

Quality of posts: (55% of decision)
Frequency of posts: (15%)
Reader involvement: (15%)
Technorati.com Ranking: (15%)

The criteria prompted me to think about my own blog and where it is going, so I thought I would conduct a quick self-assessment and see what my readers think as well.

Quality of posts: November has, due to my commitment to participate in NaNoWriMo, not been my best month for quality of posts. I am, however, very happy with the posts I wrote in September and October, especially those concerning the 30 Poems in 30 Days project and the 10 Days of Character Building Project. Overall, I would give myself a B in this category, and plan to move back toward an A in December, once my NaNoWriMo participation is complete.

Frequency of posts: Again, this has suffered a bit this month, due to the novel commitment. In September and October, I held myself to a daily posting schedule, but I have slacked off a bit in November. Again, I would give myself a B.

Reader Involvement: Right now, I have about eight readers who comment with some regularity. That isn’t bad, but it certainly could be improved. I don’t know how I measure up to other blogs in this category, but I would give myself a C+.

Technorati Ranking: My current Technorati rank is 29,043. That beats everyone on the list except Copyblogger (which has an ENORMOUS following I won’t be surpassing any time soon) and Copywriting Maven. I think that Freelance Writing Jobs might have a bigger following than mine but for some reason Technorati won’t give me a rank for that site. I’ll give myself an A in that category.

Overall, I think my blog earns a solid B overall. A month ago, I might have rated it higher, but I am not thrilled with my November posts.

Now, I ask for your feedback:

How do you think my site compares with the others?
What would you like to see me writing about in the future?
How frequently would you like me to post?
Do you like ongoing projects or individual postings?

Be sure to visit the other nominated blogs below. They are all worthy of consideration.

Written by John Hewitt · Filed Under Blogging, Writing · 11 Comments

The Home Stretch

November 26, 2007

Those of us participating in NaNoWriMo have reached the final five days of work. For those of you who are just waiting for me to finish so that I can resume my normal posting schedule — hold on tight. I’ve just passed 40,000 words. That leaves me with 10,000 words to go and five days to do it in. I have Monday off from work, so I am hoping to get the lion’s share of my word count finished tomorrow.

So far, this event has been really good for me. It has been several years since I last attempted to write a novel, and it feels good to take a new shot at it. What I have produced is still very, very rough, and there’s still so much more story to tell, but for me the point has been to get the first 50,000 word draft out of the way. It was touch and go for a while, but I am now confident that I will finish.

I’ll have more to say on the subject after I make my word count, but for now, I just wanted to let everyone know that I am making progress and I hope the other participants are as well.

Written by John Hewitt · Filed Under Fiction Writing, Writing · 7 Comments