Finish a novel 2024 accountability thread

[OctoblocksAssemble]

Hey, I was on one of these a couple of years ago and got the first draft of my novel pinned down in a year. Working on the sequel now so I thought I'd start another one.

So, my project. Book 2 of a trilogy, the first book is 2 drafts in, but I'd like to get 2 and 3 at the rough draft stage before I take the first any further. I want to have a good handle on the whole plot
It's a YA fantasy.

Just catching up with the thread today. It's great to see so many people here and so many words getting written. I've finished my list of scenes so at least I know what I've written so far and worked out where there are scenes that need putting in. I've also written a load of flashbacks to my main character's earlier life, since they started popping into my head, but I don't know where they fit into the narrative yet. I'm up to about 91k words, and it's even more disorganised than before 😆

Costacoffeeplease - I manage 300-700 words a day so it's not fast, but I've written regularly and it really works if you keep going, even on days when you don't feel inspired.

BusyMummyWrites01 - I'm just writing it all into Word. I did have to make a large diagram over a few sheets of paper stuck together to work out the timeline for the plot and subplots.

YukoandHiro - I just got started out of the blue and it's been amazing, go for it!

I'm not writing in a linear way either, I just write scenes as they come into my mind and hope they connect up later. It's sometimes more like the characters are telling me their story rather than me making it up. I think one of my big sticking points at the moment is that the scenes I need to write are the ones with more of the minor characters in, but I don't know the minor characters very well yet.

I had a bumper weekend, doing nearly 4k each day! I'm now down to the end of the story and just have the wrapping up chapters to do. Then I have to write a prologue as I realised I need to start the story a little bit before it did start. It should finish up around the 90k mark. Not sure I'll get anything done tomorrow. I'm hoping I will on the rest of the week and I get it all done this week!

Then the real work starts when I have to turn it from the massive big mess it currently is, into something readable. It's going to need an absolute minimum of a couple of redrafts. So it's a long haul project but it would be nice to think that this time next year it could potentially be something pretty good!

Well done @GhostImposter , that's fantastic progress! There may still be a way to go in terms of redrafts but getting the first one done is still a brilliant achievement

Can I join? I have a WIP and I am on my 5th edit. I need to remove 10k words. It's sitting at 129k. Struggling with this.

What genre is it? (if it's a genre!). I'm trying to get mine to end up below 100k, but I'm in the middle of a rewrite and it's getting longer 😱

One thing I've found useful is to come in to scenes as late as possible and get out early as possible, and to do a mix of dialogue and summary in scenes. But still I'm over my limit!

It's fantasy.

,,,,

Switched back to the present, and managed to get things going again. Up to 8,500 total now, and with some idea of where things are heading.
Hello @LuciferRising , welcome aboard 😀

I've just finished my first draft. It's a bit anti-climactic at this precise moment. (The feeling not, I hope, the story.) But I think that's mainly due to some other stuff going on in my real life.

It's quite funny because right up until my last chapter I was figuring out a huge amount about my characters and their backstory, motivations, general interests and how that shaped them, etc. So it's definitely made me a fan of the whole vomit out a first draft and don't bother trying to make it better as you go, method. Because now I have a whole new understanding of everything, even with having created a very, very detailed outline before I got going. Everything has changed in so many small ways that it all amounts to a pretty different way of telling the story overall. So if I'd been editing and concerned about polished storytelling as I went, I'd have wasted a huge amount of time and probably bogged myself down too much to finish.

Now, I've done this massive amount of work that even though it's super daunting to think about going back and working out everything that I've changed. It's that bit less daunting knowing that I have succeeded in the first big challenge of doing the whole first draft and doing it with relative ease.

I've learned, so, so much doing this, that I'm pretty excited to see what else I'm going to learn in the next phase!

Do you have a plan on how you will edit? I love editing. I have learnt loads but every time I go back to edit, thinking this will be the last time, I notice so much more because of an increase in skill. I'm on my 5th cycle - I want to reduce but paint in some additional depth. I believe this will be where I review each scene, paragraph and sentence and check they are performing well.

I'm concerned about pronoun overuse which generally means the sentence structure is too repetitive - but I do enjoy using different sentence structures to control pace and rhythm.

Well done @GhostImposter! That’s so awesome to actually have something ‘done’ and I like that you’ve done it the word vom way because that’s what I’m trying to do now, just get words and story down and see what happens, worry about polishing in the edit! Though I’ve not written anything for days, I need to just get back on with it 🙌🏻🙌🏻

Well done @GhostImposter , huge congratulations on finishing! On both drafts of book 1 I felt rather despondent on finishing. I think it's the knowledge that the next step is start over again 😅
@LuciferRising how close do you think you are to the final version? I know that a big thing I need to address is my lazy writing style, but it's daunting. I imagine I still have a lot of drafts to go on mine.

I think by end of March I'll have a version I personally won't be able to do anything more with because I am too close. I'll need beta reader or I am toying with using Jericho Writers. It will be expensive but I'd use the output as a lesson.

I have multiple pov characters, so I'm thinking of taking each of them and going over their chapters individually. So I take every chapter of character A and figure out what's woking and not working for her. Then do it for character B, etc. I think it will help me ensure that each character if fully formed in terms of their voice and personality. But also that the character arc I have for each of them actually comes across naturally on the page. Because when switching between characters, I think it's to move the plot along but for a character we haven't heard from in a while to not have moved along with it from a motivation standpoint.

@OctoblocksAssemble On both drafts of book 1 I felt rather despondent on finishing. I think it's the knowledge that the next step is start over again 😅

That makes a lot of sense. It's also that editing feels like less tangible in terms of achievement. In draft one, I just had to count words. It was easy to set a target and feel good about hitting it. Now I don't know how to keep that feeling of progress.

You'll see the progress in writing quality. I use Scrivener so colour code each scene once edited to track. Red Amber, green for whether I think it needs more work. Blue once complete.

8,900 now. The 10k mark is tantalisingly within reach. First action scene is coming up, which I find always takes a bit of a mental gear shift.

I’m still going, past 18.000 words now and into one of the meatier parts of the story, which is more fun to write 😊

It's nice to hear everyone's progress, I've only managed 1700 words this week, which isn't great, but at least I've written something! I hope I'll manage more words this coming week.

I am struggling big time to get into my second draft. I had thought I could hit the ground running but I went back over it. Did lots of notes and was daunted but enthusiastic. Then I took a couple of days off and have completely and utterly faltered. There is such a difference between just writing and going and going. And then turning that into something not shit. I've done it plenty of times before and I love when something switches on and you can get into a flow state of nice writing. But it's just not coming. 🙁

Can you pick one thing to tackle? Plot holes? Characterisation? Over use of certain words?

I started on tackling 'that' to get me into editing.

This is me at the moment too. I spent more time staring at the screen than typing anything.

That was to @GhostImposter I can’t even type on Mumsnet properly 😂

I'm basically open to doing a pretty full rewrite as I was learning things about my characters right up to the very end that I now have to go back to the start and integrate into their characters. It's just that I'm really struggling to write well. Normally when I write anything really well, I go there. I get immersed in my characters and I can feel their feelings. Today I rewrote most of my first chapter and while it was definitely better than the first draft, it's so, so, so far away from what I know it can be if I really let go into it. But I just can't seem to find that way in.

I've been thinking about it a lot tonight and I think that maybe my problem is the opening idea. It seemed like a clever way to start when I first wrote it in the outlining phase but I'm going to jettison it tomorrow and start over from a different moment. I think what I've been trying has been holding me back from finding my route in. So it's time to kill my darlings and try something new.