Catégorie : Writing a novel

There’s the Snowflake method.

The 3 acts structure method.

The « I don’t give a rat’s ass about writing methods, I’m a real writer, I write with my soul, and I just wanna write my mind-blowing novel and have the world bow before me, got it? » method.

Every writer’s approach to writing a novel is slightly different.

For sure.

But every writer, from the all-mighty tortured ones to the humble aspiring ones (like yours truly), have one thing in common.

Yep, that’s right.

Every writer have to write. the. novel.

From the idea to the book on the shelves, it’s an adventure!

In this series, I go through my process to develop an idea for a novel, hoping it can help other writers.

First: Let’s brainstorm!

Continuer la lecture de « Writer Notebook: First brainstorm »

I like that line.

It’s from the MasterClass publicity running these days before almost every single writing craft video.
The one with author Neil Gaiman, who’s writing I do admire very much indeed.

« Every now and then, the mists will clear. »

Continuer la lecture de « Diary of a new project. Day 133-134: the mists »

I figured it out.

I said I would stop trying to salvage what I thought needed to be deleted, which was more than 30 000 of revised and beta-reader approved words, and just re-write.

But.

30 000 words !

Of approved words !

Nope. Couldn’t do it. Not after all those years, all that hard work.

I’m freelancer paid to write, I’ve studied literature and creative writing for 6 years, NO WAY I could have been that incredibly clueless about that story.

It was stressing me out to no end.

I woke up in the middle of the night thinking about it.
Either I was so deeply wrong about the story, I might as well quit writing because « hello ».
Or something was wrong with the way I was approaching the « how to fix » the subplots extravaganza.

In other words, maybe I was having a very strong case of revision melt-down.

Waking up from a depressing dream in the middle of the night, I came around to realize that I was having a complete drama-queen meltdown.

I went back reading the new outline and, thank heavens and hells, it got me thinking about the first story decisions I made, why I made those story decisions, why those decisions made the story better.

The new outline went bye-bye pretty quickly. I kept only one or two things and did the sensible thing to do, the thing I would have done in the first place, if I’d taken some time off to think things through instead of jumping right into drama mode, saying « it’s all crap, I need to start over ».
FIX the gaps, FIX the feeling of subplots overload.

Away from the standard word count

And I’m at 58K words. Happy, joyful words. I have 4 full chapters to write before I can call it « the end ».

Yep, this looks less and less like a standard middle-grade novel. I’ll keep writing as plan, see what the final word count.
Then, and only then, I will give the manuscript to beta-readers, maybe even a professional editor.

I want this book to be stand-alone, buuuuuut, considering my peculiar small francophone bubble book market and book marketing strategy worked before, it might actually work to divide the book in a Part 1, Part 2 thing.

The sale price for each part of the book would be lower, always a good thing since everybody’s budget is tight. And, here’s hoping, there’s the possibility of creating a buzz « waiting for part 2 » thing. If of course, Part 1 take off as projected.

Writing this middle-grade novel has been an honest-to-the-core adventure for me, and it keeps surprises me, challenging me. It started as a funky gateway out of my boring to the soul office job to a full-on real writing project.
It keeps bringing a smile to my face… if not every time I work on it, pretty often nevertheless.

With those beautiful thoughts in mind, I better get back to it now or otherwise, I will call it a night and watch some Bob Ross action on Netflix.

Thanks so much for reading, dear writer friends.