One Big Novel Writing Mistake To Avoid.

How the write hard, write fast advice resulted in me deleting over half of my first novel. 

I have a hard time with absolutes anymore. Write hard, write fast. First drafts are shitty. There's only one way to write a novel. Three-act is better than four-act, and so on. I'm just an each to their own, and it takes what it takes, kinda gal. 

Now don't get me wrong. I love Anne Lamott and the idea of being okay with a "shitty first draft," and I love events like NaNoWriMo: the challenge, spirit, community, and mission to get more writers writing and finishing their books is right up my alley!

I believe there is a place for hard, fast writing, not looking back, and maintaining forward momentum, and that place is after you have created a plan. 

Not an airtight, foolproof, 50K outline of a plan. No offense Mr. Patterson.

No. I mean a flexible high-level strategy that is more than plot points. 

I'm talking about a plan to connect the characters emotionally to what happens in the book, to show why it matters, and to use that to prove the story's point. 

When I first began drafting fiction, I wholeheartedly embraced the write hard, write fast, be okay with mess mentality, and you guessed it, I had no plan. 

Nope. 

What I had was a feeling and a vague idea for a scene. Actually, it wasn't even a scene—it was a moment. A spark of an idea between two characters. From that spark, I started banging out the words.

And when I finally finished that draft, guess what happened? I threw about 60K away (more than half my book). 

It's not that the words were shitty, at least not all of them. It was that the logic didn't hold. The events that occurred weren't actions driven by my protagonist in pursuit of a goal; it was just a bunch of things happening that my character responded to, sometimes without a good reason. Sometimes my character's actions made no sense other than to serve my plot. 

Essentially, I wrote a book with no narrative drive, no reason for the reader to be invested and keep turning the page. It lacked cause and effect, a logical, emotional throughline that serves as the character's primary internal motivation. 

The book didn't work, and I spent three years fixing it. It was painful and but I was determined. And I learned a better way. 

Now, I believe in spending more time upfront, figuring out what you want to say and why,  in understanding your character's motivations and how their fears and misguided beliefs drive them. 

I believe in knowing what you want your characters to learn by the end of the story, understanding the best viewpoint to present to your reader, and being clear on certain world-building specifics that will impact your flawed character as you march them through your plot. 

Figure those things out and then write hard and fast. 

You don't need to know everything to begin, but you do need to know certain things. That's why I wrote the First Draft Confidence Workbook and Resource Guide. I don't want anyone else to scrap 60k or more. 

“A goal without a plan is just a wish.” – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry