Wednesday, July 25, 2012

W.I.P. Wednesday: How to NOT write a novel



Here is how the thoroughly screwed myself while writing this book.

I’ve been writing my current and only WIP for 5 years on and off…but we’ve been a lot more off then on. Five years does a lot to a person and a manuscript. It’s changed considerably since I started, it's almost nothing like my original idea. I’ve probably written at least 200,000 words in total. Only 79,000 are in my current revision. At first the book was third person following one singular character. Now it is first person alternating between two characters.

Here’s the major issue: 
I wrote most scenes out of order. For some people this works, however, I have a lot of little things going on in the book (subplots, characters, etc.). So when I have to start at the beginning to connect all the scenes, most don’t fit or have to be completely rewritten.

In this draft I’ve had upwards of 87,000 words and cut out at least 10,000 because the scenes didn’t make sense anymore. I didn't even use to have a major plot (???) until I recently outlined the story.

Basically I’ve had to rewrite or plain old write the entire book again and I still have a lot of scenes to finish. Sometimes I want to cry when I think of all the wasted time and energy I’ve put in this thing. And I know people says it’s not wasted because you’re learning to write, but God it feels wasted.

So here’s my advice:  
If you’re going to write scenes out of order, have a basic outline so you’re just not writing willy nilly. For my next project, I’m going to write in sequence because there is not enough aspirin in the world to help with this headache WIP.