First Novel Advice: Ten Writing Tips I Learned from Finishing a Novel

And it's Monday again, my friends. I hope you're fully caffeinated, because I've got a serious post for you today. Have you written a novel? If so, you know that there are some days when you look at all of those carefully chosen words and think: I really made this? Okay, that's every day.

But what about if you're not quite there yet? What if you're mid-novel, mid-chaos, mid-headache? Well, that was me just a few months ago. Staring at the screen. Thinking everything sounded terrible. Thinking I'd never actually finish. But miracle of miracles, I did. And you can too.

Here's some of my best first novel advice, in ten snapshots of learned lessons:

On Writing...

1. First Drafts are generally garbage. If you're one of those lucky few with a magical touch that turns words into gold, good for you. But since I wrote my whole first draft on paper, I could barely make out what I'd written. First drafts are where you want your mind to wander, explore and drift. It's okay to feel lost. You're probably going to change it all anyway.

2. You actually have to put words on paper. Sometimes, "writing" means staring into space, hopping on Twitter and talking about writing. This will get you nowhere. Setting a writing schedule allows you to maximize your time and gets you that much closer to completing your novel. And remember, free-writing is your best friend.

3. Characters don't always play nice. When I started writing These are the Moments, I thought I had a good grasp on who these characters were. But when I tried to force them into settings or plot lines, they usually veered off the path. Characters play by their own rules. It's your job to let them. Sentences like those are what make non-writers think we're crazy. 

On Editing…

4. Editing is the devil's greatest secret. You finish your first draft, and you're feeling pretty good. You have a book, mostly. You think you're awesome. And then you read it. The characters are all over the place. Plotholes the size of craters litter your manuscript. And you're this close to giving up. But then you read this article, and the world gets a little brighter.

5. Hire an Editor Friend. Editors are writers' greatest weapons, apart from erasers and naps. When I found Tanya Gold, I knew she and I were the perfect match. Not only was she excited to work with me, but she was excited about the work itself. This was a huge advantage for me, and it made working with her fun and beneficial. Learn how to find a freelance editor here.

6. Beta Readers, Beta Readers, Beta Readers. Maybe you're stuck between drafts. Maybe your characters are all wrong, your dialogue seems dry or you need help picking an ending. Don't stress! Find people you trust to give your manuscript a quick read. Here's how to find beta readers for your novel.

On (Self) Publishing...

7. Take your time. If you're looking for first novel advice, this is key. When it comes to publishing your own novel, take the time to do the research. What's an ISBN? Which platform should you use? How do you format an ebook for Kindle? All of these are answers you need to know. Debating on traditional vs. indie publishing? Here's a quick guide for you.

8. Build Your Author Platform. If a book publishes to no audience, is it really a book? (Yes, it is.) However, it helps to have a solid base to start. Learn how to connect with readers through social media, so that when the time comes to publish, your name is already out there. I started blogging over a year ago, and have grown my blog by writing a blog series, accepting guest posts and maximizing my SEO.

9. Marketing, Marketing and Marketing. This goes hand in hand with building your author platform, but remembering that you and your book are two products of a single brand is imperative. Developing your products and finding new ways to reach readers is crucial. What unique quality sets you apart from the crowd? Learn more about marketing for writers in this article.

And a bonus...

10. Writing is a calling, a habit and a passion. When I first started writing, it was a hobby. A way to tap into my very active imagination. But now, it's developed into so much more. Writing is something that I have to practice at in order to improve. Writing is often tedious and stressful, but fulfilling and exciting. If you're lucky enough to call yourself a writer, recognize your talent and appreciate it.

Discussion Time: What have you learned from writing a novel? What do you hope to learn? What do you know now that you wish you'd known when you started writing?

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What to Write Next: Deciding on Your Next Project

This is post #13 in a fifteen post series, entitled “15 Days to Writerly Awesome in 2015,” posting on Sunday, Monday, Wednesday and Friday of January.

Below is a guest post by my friend, Drew Hayes, writer of the Super Powereds:

Writing about writing is difficult to do, or at least to do without devolving into a circle jerk of quotes and tropes. I don’t know that I’ve ever actually read something that taught me how to be a better writer, aside from the foundations of grammar I learned early in life and then proceeded to fuck up consistently from that point on. Learning to write is done by reading, sure, but by reading things you love that draw you in, and seeing techniques that you incorporate into your own repertoire. I doubt I could give any advice about improving one’s writing that would be worth listening to, so I’m not going to try.

What I do think I can help with, even if only a little, is the process for deciding what to write. Let’s be honest here: most authors have 3 – 300 ideas floating around in our skulls at any given moment, jockeying for attention and causing us to daydream during the boring bits of meetings. How does one decide what the next project is going to be? Do you go with one that fits the expected mold of what you’ve previously produced, or try and play into an under-served market to expand your readership? Picking one idea to pursue is a tough decision to make, but I have a quote I like to keep in mind whenever I’m choosing projects:

“Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful.” – Warren Buffet.

Some of you will undoubtedly recognize that as having nothing to do with writing, and in fact being (excellent) advice about the stock market. Nonetheless, I find it holds true in the world of writing just as much as the world of business. Often times there will be genres that go through the cycle of becoming hot, then explode all over the literary world until a point of such over saturation is reached that no one wants to touch the property for fear of being lumped with hundreds of other similar works. A wonderful example: Vampires over the last five years, or zombies before that.

For many writers, going into a genre at the point of over saturation is a death sentence, but as someone who occasionally writes satire, for me that’s actually a sweet spot. Good satire and comedy revolve around poking fun at the expectations people have built in their heads, and the more wide-spread that knowledge is the more a satirist can trust their readers to have those pre-existing notions. By the same token, I try to avoid any properties that are “huge” or a “sure thing” because I know the tipping point for them is inevitable, and I don’t want to be on the wrong side of that crush when they strike. Like most of life, it’s all in the timing.

This is not me trying to coax you all into doing satire or anything of the like. I merely use myself as an example because it’s the topic I know best. My point is that when making selections for your next project, take a good look at the landscape set before you; not just a few feet in front but for miles in every direction. See not only where it is, but it might end up, then try to get ahead of it rather than following. Going with the crowd is one of the best ways to make sure you never stand out.

 Of course, all of this presumes you don’t have an idea burning a hole in your mind, in which case we all know you’ll have to write that, landscape be damned. If such is the case then just buckle in and enjoy the ride.

Why You Should Edit Your NaNoWriMo Novel Now

This is post #11 in a fifteen post series, entitled “15 Days to Writerly Awesome in 2015,”  posting on Sunday, Monday, Wednesday and Friday of January.

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Below is a guest post from my dear friend Marissa Fuller, editor extraordinaire:

January is a time for reflecting on the past year. Just a few months ago now, many of us writerly folk participated in NaNoWriMo, if I’m not much mistaken. If you haven’t started already, you’ve likely been popping your head into your office/ water closet/ cupboard under the stairs, or wherever it is you keep your laptop, thinking it’s about time to get to editing that NaNo manuscript. On the other hand, you may have already finished editing it! I know a few people who pitched and queried their NaNo manuscripts in December (??!!@##UHFSOA).

Here’s the thing—you wrote that manuscript within the confines of a month. It could be absolute gold, but there is no getting around the fact that it was written in thirty days or less. For most of us, that means we just jotted down our story as fast as we could, not giving ourselves many moments to sit and think on the perfect phrasing (this is what drove me mad during NaNoWriMo), or the proper scene sequence, or to mix in the right amount of foreshadowing. Here's why you should edit your NaNoWriMo novel now:

Breathe in Edits

Take your time in editing. Just do a couple hours a day (a week!) if that’s what your manuscript needs. Mull over plot changes, edit out of order—give yourself the time you didn’t take while creating in NaNoWriMo. Even thought you wrote something quickly, you still have to put in the hours in other ways, like editing.

New writers might think that editing is basically syntax and punctuation corrections, and that alone. The truth of the matter is, your manuscript is born out of editing. Edits could (and should) change your manuscript in a huge way, even more so if you’re having a professional edit your manuscript as well.

It’s no small task, and it’s not something that can be done in a rush. Your first few drafts are just as, if not more, important than your first, because you continue to write and to learn your story as you weave through it.

Let your manuscript breathe the sweet air of change, of growth, of synonyms that liven the language and bring it to a whole new level. Oh, and did I mention? You should probably breathe, too.

Novel Advice: What to Do When the Story Isn't Working

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This is post #7 in a fifteen post series, entitled “15 Days to Writerly Awesome in 2015,” 

posting on Sunday, Monday, Wednesday and Friday of January.

This is a guest post, brought to you by the lovely Ashley R. Carlson. Read her other guest post here. Enjoy!

I published my debut novel, “The Charismatics,” in December of 2014, and it was a whirlwind six months leading up to the release (read about my process here and how I felt after the release here). So now that things have died down a little, I began to work on something new, because that’s what every successful indie author says to do, right? RIGHT.

Whenever you finish a piece of work, get started on something new. Side note: Don’t spend weeks or even months trying to market the thing. Let your readers do that for you. Just produce more great work and get your name and work in readers’ hands. (I do have a couple of speaking events coming up that will involve “The Charismatics,” and possibly an event at an indie bookstore, but those were in the works before release. Other than that I haven’t written guest posts for it, nor paid for advertising. I’d rather write some new material to sell).

So that was my plan, to begin working on another novella in a completely different genre than my novel (contemporary adult vs. YA steampunk fantasy) because 1) I wanted a break from fantasy and 2) I wanted to push myself with a new genre.

A few things happened when I started working on the first draft of my novella, “Misery and Marlene,” a few weeks ago, and I noticed how nice it was to be writing a first draft again (the freedom! The inexplicably wild naked-and-running freedom of pantsing a first draft of something again!). I also noticed how for some reason, it wasn’t happening very easily for me.

That’s right. I was having a hard time with various facets of “Misery and Marlene.” Firstly, it was a genre I’d never written in before, and didn’t even really know much about: contemporary. No dragons, no magic, no secret governmental plots (all awesome things in my previous novel). Nope. This story had cell phones and a girl who worked at a bar and lived in Missouri but called it “Misery” because she hated it and the whole thing just wasn’t very … inspiring. It was all sort of bland to me, and you want to know why?

Because it felt a little too much like my own life.

A single woman in a dead-end job with huge dreams she doesn’t know will come to fruition or not. Yep, I had inadvertently begun a memoir, hidden under the ruse of fiction. I also noticed that I was used first person present, which is the tense I’ve used in both my short story (“Cruel”) and my novel.

So because I wasn’t feeling the itch to sit down and tap these keys into words of the story, I decided to try some things before scrapping it entirely.

1) I changed tenses and narrative. As mentioned, it was previously a first person present tense story, which seems to be my “go to” narrative style. I like it because 1) it’s personal (you’re in the character’s head, hearing their thoughts and experiencing their experiences) and 2) it’s “in the moment.” “The Hunger Games” series is written in first person present tense, and I think it lends to the intensity and fear of the situations. Both my short story and novel are high-action, tense stories with female protagonists, so it worked for them as well. But this? This contemporary novella about a sad girl in a sad place with a sad life?

It was all just sounding a bit too whiny, a bit too mundane in first person narrative. So I changed it to third person past tense a few days ago. But how?

2) I started over. Yep. I ignored the 10,000 words I’d begun (though I didn’t delete them completely) and began a new manuscript, with the differing tense. I noticed a difference right away; this story was no longer a silly diary of a bored girl. It was deeper than that. It was tragic. I could literally smell the tragedy off the main character, off her family members, off the little town in Missouri itself. Disappointment. Broken dreams. Compromises. Dysfunction. The words were flying into my head and onto the page, and I was looking at things from an entirely new angle. The other good thing was this:

3) I used the previous information for the new version. I had 10k words of good material to direct me with this new draft—characters and their names, places, events. Now, obviously this is what an outline would tell me, if I did those. But even for those of you who outline like crazy, I bet sometimes you get started on a story and it just doesn’t work, for some fundamental reason. That doesn’t mean you get rid of the entire idea—it could still be a great one. You just need to tweak, examine another way. And if you still feel like there’s passion there, that it’s a story your heart aches to tell, than keep at it.

Just remember that if the idea has grown stale in your mind, scrap it completely and start something new. Always, always start something new. You’re a writer, after all—the stories are there in your mind and at your fingertips, just waiting to be placed upon the page.

Ashley R. Carlson grew up wanting a talking animal friend and superpowers, and when that didn’t happen, she decided to write them into existence. She lives in Scottsdale, Arizona with four (non-talking) pets and one overactive imagination. Follow Ashley R. Carlson’s writing at www.ashleyrcarlson.com or find her on Twitter @AshleyRCarlson1. Her novel, “The Charismatics” has debuted to rave reviews on Amazon and Goodreads and can be found here.