I’m still in the process of finding my process. Can you relate? There are a million websites out there that claim to have the secret formula for writing a novel. There’s no magic formula, of course — half those sites will admit as much. I’m a staunch believer in “paying dues” as a writer. You need to try different things, go on the writer’s version of a vision quest, find your Yoda and face your dark self before you can lift those rocks with your mind, if you will.
Last year I tried just going for it. I followed the nugget of an idea, making it up as I went along. I still thought I was a pantser – someone who writes with only the foggiest notion of where the story is taking them. I had this idea that planning a novel was somehow cheating the artistic process. And pantsing just felt right to me. Normally I’m not a planner. I’m not even a linear thinker; when I read a magazine, for instance, I naturally flip around and read it out of order. For some weird reason I often like to read it back to front.
I should mention I’d tried this pantser thing before, several years back, and had given up after about a hundred pages or so. It seemed when I let my imagination go without a leash it took all the directions at once. Story threads crossed and intertwined until the whole thing was a hopeless jumble. I lost the plot and then my drive. I walked away feeling defeated in every sense.
This time was different, I told myself. The first time my idea had been too weak. With what I considered a much stronger concept, I trudged ahead.
I wrote for six months and ended up with about 100,000 unsatisfying words. Oh, there was a beginning, a middle, and an end, just no life to be found.
So I decided I wasn’t done. I continued the story, writing for several more months, getting my thousand words in every day, until I reached a whopping 200,000 words. I’d written the equivalent of two novels, if I went by the suggested word count for beginning authors in my genre.
I thought the second 100,000 words were better. It seemed that along the way I’d learned something about pacing, tension, conflict. My characters were, if not coming to life, at least wiggling. This was my opinion only, because better or not, these words were still garbage and not anything I would show anyone else.
I know, first drafts are first drafts. They’re not meant to be good, they’re fodder to be refined. And I agree, but I think the first draft has to have some promise, some shining nugget under the awkward wording and plot holes that’s worth digging out. What I had here was practice on a still-too-flimsy premise. I decided not to revise, but instead to move on. Right decision? I don’t know. It was a decision.
Since then I’ve joined the Jerry Jenkin’s Writer’s Guild and learned a lot about the art of story telling. I’ve hit up other material online in an attempt to round out my education.
One day I came across the Snowflake Method by Randy Ingermanson. Randy is a scientist, so is supremely comfortable with meticulous planning. I’d read his theory on growing a story like a snowflake years before but had dismissed it because, hey, I was a born pantser, right? Just like my favourite writer, Stephen King. But some earnest attempts and spectacular failures have led me to reconsider. I am, after all, a software engineer by trade, and designing robust code has much more in common with the Snowflake Method than S. King’s strategy of just winging it.
So I’ve decided to give the Snowflake Method a try. I don’t think it’s for everyone, but so far it’s going alright for me. I’ve been planning for several weeks now, and I think I have a pretty good layout for my next novel attempt. I’m feeling confident about hammering out a first draft once I have all those unruly story threads lined up. Even if I adlib along the way, which I surely will, at least I know there is a path through the trees, and I’m not going to find myself at a dead end with no way out.
I’ll keep you informed on how it goes.
And if you’re still struggling like I am, chin up. The mountain is steep, but we’ve decided we want to climb it. And the one after it. Because that is precisely what makes us insane writers.
