How do I get on with the next 50 pages?
So I started out with the bum-on-seat-technique, writing my shitty first draft, writing whatever came into my head on the chosen subject, and then editing. I wanted to finally learn to stick to the same story (of a crime syndicate this time) for more than a couple of pages.

I set my goal at 50 - if I could write 50 pages, surely I could write 100 or 200? At 50 I gain some confidence of finishing it, and would allow myself to talk about the story.

I edited the shitty parts, bridged, crossed out, replaced. Got a beginning, an end...

Only now - at 51 pages the story is fairly polished, and this totally blocks me up. Whatever I write has to fit in with those first 50 pages - goodbye spontaneity. I find myself adding one paragraph at a time to the existing text instead of doing a whole chapter in a day.

Anyone experienced this, any advice on how to get past it?

A couple of ways of looking at this:

1) Writing a 'shitty first draft' is not the only way to produce a novel, even if it probably has the most vocal advocates. Another way is to do plenty of preparatory thinking, so you know the broad arc of the plot; who the main character is and what will be their problem the story will solve (or not), etc. Then sit down and write the whole thing in one hit, as close to the finished book as you can get. This method, in my view, is best for releasing creativity.

2) If you want to stick with the SFD approach, it would still be best to write the whole thing in one hit before re-writing. To go back and polish the first 50 pages probably will, as you say, just block your forward flow, especially if you don't know how the plot will go from this point on.

If this was me, I'd throw away these 50 pages, do some lying in the dark thinking till I got to the point where the sheer joy of creativity is trying to burst out of my fingers, then re-draft from the beginning, aiming to produce the whole story in one hit, with no checking back until I reached the end.

Terry

If you are a seat-of-pantser (as I am myself) rather than a pre-planner, then these kind of blanks can easily occur, when you just aren't sure where the story goes next. But there are lots of things you might do to try and get back in the zone. Rather than sitting down with the 50 pages and trying to add the next paragraph, take the pressure off. Give yourself licence to just write for fun, to experiment, to write things which might never (probably won't ever) go in the book. Take your characters and just pitch them into crazy situations, to see how they react. Write an earlier scene again, but from a different POV. Write a scene which actually comes years before the novel,opens but isn't needed as back story - your MC's wedding, say, or her first day at college. Just anything which involves (i) immersion in these characters and (ii) the process of just writing something. Maybe that will be enough to re-ignite the spark?

Rosy x

Thanks Terry. I think I agree that the SFD approach is a bit difficult. I end up writing a bit here a bit there and it's hard to get flow that way. Of course it pains me too much to throw the longest thing I have done away but I might just have to unless things change!

I found it hard not to edit while I wrote though, because I did not know what is known in the story, what has already happened before I decided what order chapters were coming... that made it hard to write. But now that everything already fits it's even harder :D

Is it common to have written the end of the story already when you've just got 30k words? And to write a bit in the middle a bit at the beginning skipping about??

I write in bits and bobs. Sometimes a chapter at a time, sometimes a paragraph, then I go back and edit edit edit, then move forwards again. Some writers work better that way. I think you have to find out exactly what works best for you, rather than attempting to follow some manual's idea of how best to write a first draft. If you find yourself adding one para at a time, keep going that way, creativity is not measured in quantity. You may even find that going to the middle or the end and writing some of those sections helps you return with renewed vigour to that 51st page and write on with your creativity restored to maximum.

Cut yourself a little slack. All this worrying is doubtless the number one reason your creativity has taken a nose dive. Think to yourself 'I will get there in the end' - every book is a journey, sometimes a long and painstaking one. Keep the destination in mind as positively as you can and when you are despairing, take a break, allow yourself to breathe. Go out and have a coffee, a walk, enjoy the day and return to the writing refreshed and ready to crack on to that destination, however far away it lies.

I wouldn't worry about what's 'common' and what isn't where writing's concerned. All that's important is you write with joy and creativity. I'm right with Rosy on writing for fun, experimenting, etc. For me, I never could stomach the idea of writing a whole draft with the expectation of it being shitty. No fun in that; just the huge weight of knowing I'm going to have to plough through the whole damn thing again, and probably again and again. The fact is, your subconscious knows more than you do, and is more creative. It just needs you to let it out, rather than bog it down with endless tinkering and revising. I suspect if you just let rip with this story, the plot will not be as bad as you probably think it will be. Then, you can get someone trusted to read it through and help you make the fixes that will round it off.


Terry

I edit as I go, because I just can't face the thought of doing it at the end of a complete first draft, but also jump ahead to avoid getting stuck in this paragraph by paragraph slog.
Sometimes it helps to think in terms of scenes and write those with gaps in time and location, rather than feeling you have to account for every moment of the character's day.
And it can be helpful to have a middle and end scene written, so you know what your characters are aiming for.


- NaomiM

Thanks guys!!

I already feel the urge to go on! Have found some things I feel are missing in the story and that gives me a motivation to break things up into unedited chaos again from having this edited polished piece with working chronology and plot.

I need to give the villain more of an upperhand, and to motivate some stuff and to let one of the characters be sneaky and another character to give up on the whole thing before plunging in and saving the day... :-P

SFD for me is a way to tell myself to keep writing even if I don't love what's coming out - so that I warm up to the great stuff.
I never could plot out a long story in my head and then write about it for too long - it gets boring to me to already know what happens. When I think of a new turn, I need to write it down at once or it gets old and I lose interest.

Thanks!

Hmm

I find myself adding one paragraph at a time to the existing text instead of doing a whole chapter in a day.

I'm really impressed by anyone who can manage a whole chapter in a day, mine appear with the speed of an arthritic snail having an off day

I console myself with the thought that it actually doesn't matter if I only write a paragraph, as long as it feels like the right one. I think I'm tending now more towards the 'edit as you go' approach, mainly because the thought of brutally revising 90,000 + plus words is fairly depressing.

I've also made myself address it in a fairly linear way, because otherwise the temptation for me is to rush ahead and do the really big, fun to write scenes, and then I'm even less inclined to do the 'filling-in' bits.

Just a thought, but are there definitely another couple of hundred pages to go? Some things seem to find there own length - are you absolutely sure this isn't something which wants to be a novella?

If it's definitely heading for novel-length, then it'll find its own momentum again, I'm sure

Astrea - that's what I was sort of afraid of - the subject was dry. But it was more a question of what you described above - having written the fun parts and the rest feeling like boring filling out.

But I though of some twists to add to the filling out so they're no longer boring!

Also I got REALLY stuck on counting pages! I knew I should not look at pages, but as I approached 50 I couldn't stop myself. And then I was just writing for volume, not for the writing and it just killed the whole thing.

Found a way to shut off automatic display of page total in Word :D (btw you guys write in word or have other favourites?)

On boring bits, Elmore Leonard's 10th rule of writing might help:

"10. Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.

A rule that came to mind in 1983. Think of what you skip reading a novel: thick paragraphs of prose you can see have too many words in them. What the writer is doing, he’s writing, perpetrating hooptedoodle, perhaps taking another shot at the weather, or has gone into the character’s head, and the reader either knows what the guy’s thinking or doesn’t care. I’ll bet you don’t skip dialogue."

The other 9 are worth looking at, too.

Terry

Bearing in mind, though, that Elmore Leonard doesn't always stick to his own rules when writing, so treat them as guidelines only.

Boring to write - boring to read, that makes sence.

Another thing I have trouble with is chapters. One scene is often too short for one chapter. But I can't decide what method to use. Sometimes a series of events are linked together to form a chapter spanning over a lot of time. Sometimes one day is a chapter, treating what several different characters are doing that day. But it's really random and untidy...

I'm not quite a SFD devotee and definitely not quite a do it once, do it right devotee either. I try to get it right, and often find my first draft is the most exciting, and when I get stuck I jump ahead to something I can do, but...

the thought of brutally revising 90,000 + plus words is fairly depressing

But I find this astonishing!

I can think of nothing more satisfying than the sense of productivity and speed of work as you chop and change to rejig a novel to make it _better_ on every conceivable measure. Seriously, I've never regretted cutting and never regretted the rework to seal the holes left by cutting and never, ever, atall regretted reorganising. Plus, you get the joy of adding in subtleties that you would never have thought of the first time around.

G

One scene is often too short for one chapter

I find I have 2.5 to 3 scenes per chapter, but 'chapter' is a fairly arbitary measurement, which can be anything from a page long, to no chapter divisions at all.