I’m going to start this post by explaining that I agree with almost everything Steven James writes.
I mean, I’ve never read his fiction. I’ve just got one of his “how to write” books, and let me tell you… it’s great!
But I disagree with a couple of things he writes.
Steven James is a pant’ser. He writes by the seat of his pants. Minimal planning, and then… off and running!
And it works for him.
It doesn’t work for me.
I have to see the novel, or I can’t write it. I’ll get writer’s block like you’ve never seen. I just can’t write. I have to know, “this is the scene where Coby goes into the basement” or whatever. I need to know certain things.
So, while Steven James is a master at looking at a scene and telling you everything wrong with it, in the case of everything he says about PLANNING a novel, I disagree. It works really well for him – and not at all for me. And that’s what you have to decide – does this method work for me?
Buy his book, read it, study it, underline almost everything – but ignore what he says about planning.
So, let’s plan your novel.
Statistics say that 97% of writers never finish their first novel. If you’ve finished your novel, according to some, you’re a writer.
Me, I just think if you’ve finished your novel you did your homework. If you get half the novel written, you’re a writer.
If it’s been twelve years and you’re on chapter one or two, you’re a wanna be. The only thing that may be separating you from being a writer instead of a wannabe is you probably just need to plan your novel.
Writer’s write. If you write, you’re a writer.
If you write, you’ll finish your novel.
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So how do you plan your novel? There’s infinite ways. Templates in Evernote, use a writer’s notebook, the Novel Factory software, Dramatica, use a Scrivener Template and some combination of above, a beat board in your writing space… The possibilities are endless.
You just have to sit down, and write a logline, also known as an “elevator pitch”.
That’s your idea in a nutshell. “A maverick New york cop goes to visit his estranged wife in Los Angeles right at the moment powerful criminals stage a terrorist event in a high rise building, and only he can stop them.”
Wow, sounds like a great movie for Bruce Willis!
According to Robert McKee, stories have 50 to 60 plot points. I’ve written a couple of times how someone referred to plot points as “story sparks”. The concept initially left me cold, until I realized that they’re talking about plot points – but it’s got to be an idea that sparks your interest. That sure stopped the writer’s block of filling out a plot point sheet in a hurry! So I write out a Save The Cat sheet first, then a 21 point one, and finally my 60 point sheet.
Now that you have that, set up your Scrivener story (I use the 30 chapter template a lot – it’s actually a little better than the one I invented!). 30 chapters,. 7 chapters each in act 1 and act 3. The rest are in act 2.
You are going to go from crisis to crisis.
Things have to get tougher and tougher for your protagonist. Like, he’s got to be barefoot and running throughout a high rise that’s under construction. The terrorists at one point have him cornered. So they shoot the glass!
The terrorists are trying to get into the bank vault.
They also are planning on the FBI getting involved, so they can bypass the last safety feature in the vault.
The FBI are planning on storming the building, knowing that some hostages will die.
McLean’s wife is one of the hostages.
As McLean shoots terrorists, the terrorists kill hostages.
See how things build and get out of control? I could go on writing Die Hard’s plot out, and hey – you may sneer at it, but it’s a perfect example of how you present a protagonist people identify with (McLean’s separated from his wife and kids, he screws up everything, gets mad when he doesn’t mean to, is constantly in trouble – we all identify with those things or they cause sympathy for us) – and then you present him with an impossible situation.
And you keep adding to it to keep everyone from getting bored.
Anyway, there you go. Watch Die Hard. Perfect example of a movie where you go from drama to drama. Watch the edited for TV version as homework for writing your novel. I’m just enough of a nerd that it was on TV once (when I had a TV) three times in one day and… I watched it all three times.
So, write your novel. Plan on it taking two weeks to plan it. Build it in Scrivener (it’s a one click thing if you have a ready made template).
Now write it. 30 days, 30 chapters. I think you can deduce how many chapters a day you have to write! You just need 1667 words a day, and you’ll have written in a month.
Write it. Didn’t get 1667 words today? Use the days where you go way over the limit to compensate. Yes, I’ve written a book in a month.
If your book has 85,000 words, it’s going to take six weeks.
Write it and don’t worry about how good it is. This will save time eliminating purple prose, that writing that’s so good you keep thinking, “this is awesome!” That writing usually pops the reader out of the story, so it has to be ruthlessly eliminated.
Just write! Write your novel.
