“…This particular blunder is known as deus ex machina, which is French for “Are you f**king kidding me?”
– Howard Mittelmark, How Not to Write a Novel: 200 Classic Mistakes and How to Avoid Them—A Misstep-by-Misstep Guide
As promised, Dear Reader, I continue to share my newest and greatest discoveries on how to write a novel. While you may not be interested in writing a novel at all, I thought I’d share these tidbits and tips as I assimilate them into my list of things to forget to do.
Below are 13 things you can do to improve your writing flow. These are basic things that help set a routine for writing. Later, we’ll discuss how to properly use sedatives and alcohol to get a good night’s sleep when the Good Idea Fairy (GIF) won’t leave you alone.
- Create a writing space. I am fortunate to be an empty nester and full-time goof-off. I repurposed an infant bedroom into an office where I can retreat from the world and create all manner of nonsense for you to read. I left the pictures of Sponge Bob and Bart Simpson on the wall to inspire me.
- Assemble your writing tools. At my desk are my MacBook Pro, large-screen monitor, and all manner of pens, pencils, markers, notebooks, and erasers. All of my erasers are in therapy for abuse. I’ve set up my office, so I don’t need to wander all over the house looking for something once I sit down.
- Break the project into small pieces. This advice has saved me from giving up halfway through a body of work in progress. I can focus on a small and easily managed document by breaking all the parts and pieces into chapters and scenes. I keep research and character biographies in separate folders. I never need to juggle more than I can handle.
- Settle on your Theme. Do this well before you get your first 100,000 words typed up. If this is an exposé of the tonnage of dog poop left in your front yard by your neighbors’ dogs, stay on point as you expand on the many affronts and how you became the neighborhood no poop zone- until you got your big chunky dog and joined the crowd. Having a theme to guide you may help keep you from wandering hither and yon with your exposé.
- Outline your story. Outlines are according to your personal desires. It only needs to be a method that helps you see the timeline and proposed chapters and scenes. It can be as detailed as you like or general enough to help you organize. Create your outline with the intent of changing it as the story evolves.
- Set a schedule. A word/page per day approach is good if you have a deadline or time to complete a goal. If you don’t have a set finish line, keep the schedule loose and change it as often as you like. The purpose is to drive you to write, but it shouldn’t be a tool to induce stress.
- Conduct your research. Not appearing clueless, even in fiction, is a good idea. People like fiction to have a sense of realness even though the story may be as far-fetched as a high school diploma for Bart Simpson. Collect pictures and information about places where the story occurs or information relevant to the fictional world you are building. Use this data to inform your story as it unfolds.
- Write a compelling opening scene. This is a series of blogs all by itself. But, for now, the idea of the opener is to grab your readers and make them want to continue reading. The opening scene sets the stage for the rest of your story.
- Sprinkle conflict and tension throughout the story. Building tension, relieving it, and building again helps keep the reader engaged. The tension and conflict cover all genres and categories. It makes the story compelling from start to finish.
- Don’t edit while writing. Let the horror build as it will. Don’t let mistakes stop the flow of words on the page. The idea is to get it down on the page. Then, go back and fix it up a little. If you plan to publish, you will likely edit, revise, or rewrite portions of the story at least 12 times. Keep archive copies and never have only one copy of your manuscript or multiple in one place. This practice invites gremlins to strike. I had a 100,000 word Novel written by a friend that I was commenting on in Microsoft Word and when I imported that latest updated copy, MS Word blew this manuscript up so bad it couldn’t be saved. We were working on a single copy in a shared cloud folder. 4 years later, we still haven’t been able to start over completely because of the trauma. This happened with The Sad Café as well. I am not a fan of MS Word because of this. Just have back-ups that are safe.
- Don’t quit in the middle. This seems to be a common point where many storytellers give up, or just me. It’s believed that the middle is where many stop and ask themselves what happens next, and their Head Elves reply, We don’t know. End of story. We pantsers face this dilemma a lot. I’ve found that the outline, ideas captured on notes, and a solid idea of the who, what, when, where, and why for the story and each chapter keep the muse babbling in my ear.
- Write a memorable end. No need to rush to the end once you get to the middle. Take your time and think about what you want the characters and, by extension, the readers to feel when they finish the story. Don’t tell the reader what to feel. Let the story leave them with the emotions they developed on the strength of your story.
- Be a merciless editor. Finally, the story is complete, and you search for every errant word, phrase, sentence, and paragraph. This is your next to last editing session. Sometimes, putting the manuscript away for some time is a good idea to create emotional space. Once you have cooled your emotional attachment, go in there and hack it up. Use that tough love you have always heard about.
It’s confession time. I played loosey-goosey with my writing for years, creating manuscript after manuscript in various stages of disrepair and completion. I road-tested the drafts here, or on my previous blogs, and after I collected all the comments, I pulled them offline and then went at them hard.
Several manuscripts are written in the first person, and I’m rewriting them to the third person point of view based on suggestions I received. I sent them to professional editors for developmental review. They looked at structure and plot, character development, and pacing. I could see how to improve the story from the feedback I received. This is NOT a cheap process to pay others to edit from start to finish. The more we learn to do on our own, the less often we need to pay someone to tell us (me) we suck and should start over.
Good luck with your endeavors out there. Most of you are very polished content providers. I’m trying to catch up with you and share what I learn as I go. This may be the student bloviating profusely to the professors. I wouldn’t be posting this if I hadn’t had wonderful people sharing their knowledge to lift me out of reform school for terrible writers and plop me down where I can now spellcheck without adult supervision.
Hyperion Sky 
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