Visiting Days

It’s been a challenging time for everyone lately, and writers face their own particular problems in the face of lockdown. It’s easy to think that a whole lot of extra time would mean lots more writing produced, but of course everyone’s circumstances are different. So I thought I’d share the advice that has seemed to help most in the past three months for the writers with whom I work. (At least that’s what they’ve told me.)

A Little Every Day. 

If you try to get to the end of your Story by reserving one day every few months or so to do a ten-hour writing blitz, I promise that you will spend most of that allotted time remembering what the story was.

It’s like attempting to run a marathon when you have done no training - an uphill battle. 

But if you write a little of your story every day - and it REALLY doesn’t matter how small a word count – your story will start to grow and lengthen before your very eyes.

Part of what happens writing this way is that you save time because you don’t have to re-connect with the story each time you sit down. You know exactly where you are, where the characters are, what they’ve been doing, because you spent time with them only yesterday! And another advantage is that in between each daily session, your subconscious gets to work. Sitting with the characters, thinking up new ideas for what might happen next, while you and your conscious mind are busy with the washing up, the laundry, walking the dog. I don’t know why this subconscious working-out of Story starts to happen, but I can attest that it does if you’re visiting regularly.

And these can be short visits! (Though sometimes you can, of course, stay a long time.) I find it better to set myself a word count - for me, 1000 words a day - and to reach this might take a half hour one day and two hours the next. This word count is the minimum, so of course I can and will write more if things are flowing, but after I have reached my 1K, I allow myself to stop there if need be, to end on an upward note, a question, something left to say, rather than push myself to force any kind of ending which I will probably end up cutting the next day, and which might be heading in an unhelpful direction, story-wise.

HERE’S AN EXERCISE:

This is for people who are writing their first draft of a STORY. And who really, really want to get to the end. 

Don’t get bogged down in your writing. Not at this stage.

Try to write more like a screenwriter would, and by that I do not mean lots of dialogue. I am talking about SCENES. In films a story is divided into many, many more short scenes than in a prose novel. Of course long scenes do exist in films, but they are few and far between, and in general the story cuts every few minutes or so to a new location, new people, new time. 

I am NOT wanting all novels to become like films – that’s why this is an exercise for first drafts. 

So here is my challenge:

WRITE YOUR ENTIRE FIRST DRAFT IN SCENES OF 1000 WORDS OR LESS.

The rules of this are that each scene be a new location, a new action that is being taken, with new people (at least some of them). 

Keep the story moving forward. Don’t worry that all the scenes are the same-ish length right now. You will go back and thicken what you want after reaching the end, by which time I guarantee you will understand your story better. But the important thing is you are GETTING THE STORY DOWN.

The same rules of vivid writing apply: give me the details I need, to see where I am, to hear people talking, to feel I am there. But don’t overwork it - it’s a sketch, with enough for a reader to feel rooted in the world, and nothing more. 

As you sit down every day ask yourself: what happened yesterday? What are my characters feeling now? What do they want? Because of what happened yesterday, what might or could happen today?

And if you’ve been visiting your STORY every day, I bet you’ll know.