How I wrote my first novel

The first draft and the final book..

The Idea:

During the First Lockdown, I wrote a 5000 word short story. That story is essentially the first couple of chapters of 'Flying Ant Day'. Once I had finished it, I knew I could take it further. I had created a world, a setting, which was ripe for a longer story to be told. To be honest, the thought of writing a full-length novel was simply too daunting to even think about, but then I sat down and brainstormed the story out. A spider graph, characters, plot, all that stuff. Once I had that, I wrote a step-by-step roadmap of the novel. (This happens, then this happens, then this happens… The end) This was only one page long but a really nice outline. This would become ‘The Guide’. Essentially, it is a basic framework that the novel hangs on. Some people divide writers into two camps = Plotters (who have a full plot outline before they write) and Pantser’s (who write by the seat of their pants) Personally, I don’t think anyone is 100% either, it’s a bit of both, but I was definitely more of a plotter.

How Long?!

Having written nothing of novel length before, I had a fear: What if I write the story and it’s only 30,000 words long? What if I write the story and it’s 200,000 words long? How do I pace it so it is a normal novel length?! So I set myself a target of around 75,000 words. Then split the novel into three parts, aiming for 25,000 each part. Simple. (The final novel ended up being 90,000 words which I was happy with, though see below for how much that fluctuated between drafts)

Writing:

My biggest piece of advice if you’re thinking of writing a book is; WRITE! Put down the planning, put down the ‘How to write books’, turn off the YouTube tutorials on writing and WRITE!

Planning the book is fun. The spider graphs are fun. The character bio’s are fun. You think up scenes, twists, turns, it’s a giddy time. But hold on, you actually have to sit down and write the thing! I am sure there are millions of people who have done all this, then either not actually started writing or given up after X amount of words. This is the hard graft.

I would look at ‘The Guide’, and then plan a chapter out. I would have about a paragraph of description of what would happen in that chapter, then write it. Then do a paragraph for the next chapter. Then write it. Etc etc etc…People say books take on a life of their own once you start writing it and for me that was true. Originally the book was only from one character’s POV but I got to the end of a chapter with a great cliffhanger (Chapter 7) and thought ‘I don’t just want to go straight into the next scene, how can I keep the reader in suspense for a while longer? So I made it from two characters POV. Which meant going back to the drawing(writing?) board, and updating The Guide. Also, there is quite a big twist in the book which I came up with halfway through, which again meant re doing the guide. Those two changes made a vast difference to the overall plot and excitement in the book and they were not in the original plan, so do not be afraid to change as you go along, even if you’re a plotter.

I tried to write daily to keep the rhythm going, but that didn’t always happen. At first I didn’t fuss about giving myself a deadline, as the act of writing was the purpose itself, a creative outlet that I could enjoy. So I wrote as regularly as I could, but didn’t stress too much if I couldn’t. Then my wife got pregnant.

So I had a deadline: First draft finished by the due date. I did not want to be writing and looking after a newborn baby at the same time. Ain’t nobody got time for that. In the final few months, I was clear - a chapter a week and I would make it. And I did. The baby’s due date was Sunday 24th October. I finished the draft on Thursday 21st. (He came a few days late in the end).

Sometimes sitting at the laptop grinding out a few hundred words was fun, sometimes it was a slog, but it simply had to be done. I knew the feeling of satisfaction when I had completed the book would be immense and just kept thinking about that day. And that day was incredible. 94,000 words done! I’m an author, I thought, I’m a writer, I have written a novel! Whatever happens in my life now I can say that. Now all I have to do is have a quick read over it and change a few things and I can publish it…

EDITING:

Stephen King famously said, “To write is human, to edit is divine.” Stephen King is correct. Ernest Hemingway famously said, “The first draft of anything is shit.” Ernest Hemingway is also correct. I knew I would have to edit the first draft, but had no idea how much I would have to edit it. Initially, as I was writing, I would go over the chapter I had done and edit it a bit. I gave that up once the pregnancy thing happened, but even so, what I was doing was very minor. So here is how I edited the book.

1. First draft: 94,000 words.

2. Read through/First edit: I printed it out and read it, making notes as I went along. These were broad things “This character needs to be more angry in this scene”, “This character needs to mention X in this scene”, “There needs to be a scene added explaining Y”, “We need to be in this character’s head more in this chapter” etc. I also split chapters up. and even moved a couple of chapters around. Now, reading the thing through had many, many cringe moments (Why did I write that, it sounds awful? That doesn’t make any sense) but I saw that as a positive. I am making this thing better. I ended up increasing the word count. This was because I had to add sentences, and sometimes paragraphs, to better explain things. It made the story clearer. Sometimes in my head it was obvious what was going on, but when I read it back, it was not obvious to the reader. I also added a couple of scenes to build the world better. This resulted in my 2nd draft…

3. Second Draft 97,800 words.

4. Line edit: Oh boy, this is the deep stuff. The technical stuff. The gruelling one. I went through the book line by line, seeing if I could change each sentence to make it read better and clearer. Could the sentence flow better? Could I cut that sentence out? I worked on adverbs, passive voice, filter words, all that… It was not fun as this what not creative and it was not writing. But my God, the sense of making this thing better was immense. And get this, when I had done my word count had dropped by 8,000 words! I did not cut any scenes, or any characters, I merely removed 8000 superfluous words. That’s 8.2% (quick maths) of the entire text. Now imagine I had just published it after that first read through? With 8000 pointless words in it! To edit is divine.

5. Third draft 89,800 words

6. Read through/another mini line edit/another read through: Wow! I read it through and this time I didn’t cringe. In fact, for the first time I thought, “hold on, I’ve got something here, this is quite good.” I was proud. It read like an actual book. So I now planned to send it off to some beta readers. I’ll be honest, I was terrified. When I did stand up comedy I immediately knew if the jokes were funny or not. The audience either laugh or they don’t. With this writing lark, I kind of had no idea if this was the greatest thriller ever written or a steaming pile of shit. But it had to be read by some others. Just before I was going to send it to them I panicked, stopped and spent a few days reading it AGAIN! This ended up inadvertently being another line edit. I made changes on every single page, small ones, but enough that I ended up calling it another draft. And then sent it off (along with some questions for them about plot holes, characters, believability, the ending etc…)

7. Fourth draft 89,300

8. Editing based on beta readers feedback: Ok, so I got a LOT of feedback from the Beta’s (one of them made 236 notes on the text). Some of it positive, some of it, er, constructive…I was happy with the feedback for 2 reasons - 1) It was clear it was not a steaming pile of shit 2) A lot of the things they picked up on where things I already deep down knew could be better. I’ll be honest, I didn’t make a lot of major changes based on this feedback, but I made quite a few minor ones that immeasurably improved the book. Overall, I probably added about 600 words, explaining a character’s motivations better here, adding a reason for something happening there…It made the story much more well rounded. If you are thinking of writing a book, I urge you to get feedback from beta readers. It is essential, and fascinating to see what people think at this stage. To know what an actual reader thinks about it is vital before publication. The two betas agreed on some things but disagreed on others strongly. Very interesting.

9. Fifth Draft 89,900

10. Professional Line Editor: Paying for a pro editor can be a huge outlay, but all I can say is it is worth every penny. What you have to remember is every single book your readers have read has been professionally edited. Every single one. So you’re already going to be at a disadvantage if your book isn’t. Plus, you’re not as good a writer as those your readers have previously read. Although I had done my own line edit previously, in which I removed 8,000 words, I knew I wanted a pro to go over it. It’s hard to explain exactly what they did, but essentially they cleaned up sentences, made them flow better, made it clearer and better to read. But what they don’t do is change the words, take your voice away, or your style. Some changes are very minor, but there are so many of them. I accepted almost all the changes and when I read it back after I was amazed at how clear it was and how much better it flowed. The readability was so much better. But it was still my words, my voice, and the word count hardly changed at all. Amazing. I would say if you’re thinking of writing a novel, start putting some money aside every month for an editor. Some people pay for a developmental editor as well, but I used my beta readers for that and had faith in my story, so ‘just’ went for the line edit.

11. Sixth Draft 90,000

12. Final proof read (TWICE): So I read the book again. Then finished it and immediately read it again. Then put it through ProWritingAid. I read someone say that by the time you publish your book, you should be sick of it! By this point, I was getting there. But on both reads, I picked things up I needed to change. A couple of inconstancies, (I had changed a street name but then forgot to change it in a later chapter as well etc) and the worst, get this. I had written ‘solider’ instead of ‘soldier’ 48 times in the book! I found this using ProWritingAid. Word spellcheck didn’t pick it up because solider is a word right? This is what ProWritingAid is good for. It knew I had used the wrong word. Like an editor, it also checks for things like passive voice, adverbs and sticky sentences, but I didn’t really use it for that too much. It is no match for a human editor, but if you absolutely cannot afford an editor, then use ProWritingAid. Pay the annual fee. It’s worth it.

13. Formatting/ANOTHER proof read: OK, so it turned out those previous ones were not the final proofread! I got the book formatted and then read it through again, picking up three minor mistakes, a missed word (I missed the word ‘and’ out of a sentence), a misspelt word (I put the American version of meters instead of metres at one point), and a missing closing quotation mark. Just goes to show how important proofreading is. Anyway, then I was done!

Conclusion: So, that’s how I wrote my novel. I hope this helps anyone thinking of writing a book. Obviously, everyone is different, but that is how I got from an idea to a finished book…Let me know what you think.