Now you’ve finished brainstorming and planning, and you’re sitting in front of the menacing blank page. Uh oh. What happens next?
Writing your first draft ever is a huge undertaking, and it can definitely be a scary one. The good news is that it can also be so much fun, and once it’s over, you’ll have written your first novel. But there’s a long way to go between point A and point B, so let’s jump into some advice for drafting, from start to finish.
Let yourself suck!
Your first draft is almost certainly going to suck. Most writers have to complete multiple drafts and make tons of revisions before they walk away with a book they can be proud of. Jessica Brody has a fantastic perspective:
There’s no such thing as writer’s block or plotter’s block. There’s only perfectionist’s block. (Thank you Emily Hainsworth for this brilliant, brilliant phrase!) We’re terrified that what we write or plot will be horrible. Well, then, just give in to that fear and let it be horrible. Write something horrible. Plot out a dreadful, disgusting, cringe-worthy beat sheet. Let yourself SUCK!
Gail Carson Levine shares a similar sentiment:
I do not ask myself if what I’ve written so far is any good. Such thinking is prohibited. It just gets in the way… Write without deleting or crossing out. When you don’t like what went before, just hit Enter twice or drop down a line in your notebook and write the sentences better or differently. If you’re still not satisfied, repeat. Five is the limit, however. After five rewrites you have to move on.
When you let go of the expectation that you need to be a fantastic writer, you give yourself the freedom to simply write! Don’t worry about making it good, at least not yet. Just make it exist. Once it does, you’ll have all the time in the world to improve it.
Find a rhythm that works for you
Every writer is different, and every process is different. Levine talks about a few different methods:
My method is to keep track on paper of the time I spend writing. The goal is at least two and a quarter hours of writing a day, so I write down my start times and stop times. I may write for twenty-three minutes and stop to read an email. Before I look at the email, I note the time.
Some authors set themselves a daily page goal, say five pages, or a daily word count, say a thousand words. Both are fine practices, too.
Lots of us work well with small time goals and rewards. I’ll often tell myself that if I write for half an hour, I can take a break. Not too much later I demand another half hour of myself. In doing this, I’m not thinking about finishing my book, but underneath I know that if I put in enough time at my desk and write enough pages and notes and think enough, I’ll get there.
At the end of the day, no matter your process, there’s only one thing that really matters: consistency. Writing takes practice. It’s a lot like exercising, or learning an instrument; if you don’t do it consistently, you aren’t going to grow. Write until it becomes a habit. Then keep that habit going!
Show, don’t tell
You may have heard this piece of writing advice before, but maybe you’re uncertain of how to implement it. A lot of first-time writers can tend to gravitate towards telling—explaining the story to the reader, rather than letting them experience it firsthand. Here’s a quick example of the difference between the two.
- Showing: Emily was scared.
- Telling: The corridor stretched ahead, too dark to see into. Emily hugged herself and stepped carefully, her phone’s flashlight wobbling as her hand shook.
In the first example, the reader is told how Emily’s feeling, but in the second example, they don’t have to be told. They see Emily’s hand shaking, and that brief descriptions puts the reader in her shoes.
Emotions aren’t the only things that are often better shown. Character development can made much richer this way, and the “save the cat” part of Snyder’s method is a great example! Instead of telling us, “This character might be unlikable, but they’ve got a heart of gold,” Snyder suggests letting the character “save a cat” or do something that similarly kind that makes the reader more sympathetic towards them. You can apply this to worldbuilding too. Don’t tell your reader that the kingdom is impoverished; show people begging on street corners, or wearing clothes that have been patched too many times. Don’t tell your reader that dragons are fearsome; show the precautions that paranoid townsfolk take against dragon attacks, or the way knights who slay dragons are revered as heroes.
In reality, writing is about learning the balance between showing and telling. Sometimes it’s okay to just say, “The man was tall”, or “It was getting cold.” As you grow as a writer, you’ll get better at sensing which one makes the most sense for each context. For now, just challenge yourself to show whenever you can; put yourself inside the story, experience it with all five senses, and avoid falling into the habit of telling too often.
The very first page
You’ve got your idea, maybe even an outline, and you’ve set aside enough time to write. So how should you start? What makes a first page good?
Let’s first think about what might constitute a “bad” first page. There are no rules in writing, but there are certainly cliches. Here are a few common first-page cliches you might want to avoid:
Opening with your main character waking up. This is one of the most notorious openers that nearly every first-time writer gravitates towards, maybe because it feels like a natural “starting point”. You should avoid it for a few reasons. First, because it’s overused. Second, and more important: it doesn’t drive the story forward, and it doesn’t tell us anything unique about your main character.
You might be thinking about books you’ve read (and loved) that start this way. The Hunger Games is a great example. Let’s look at the opening paragraph:
When I wake up, the other side of the bed is cold. My fingers stretch out, seeking Prim’s warmth but finding only the rough canvas cover of the mattress. She must have had bad dreams and climbed in with our mother. Of course, she did. This is the day of the reaping.
There are absolutely great books that start with the protagonist waking up. Suzanne Collins gets away with it for a few reasons, and the most relevant is that this was not her debut novel; she had already written a successful middle-grade series and made a name for herself in publishing. Also, although she does use this cliche, the focus isn’t on waking up. It’s on Prim being gone. It’s an excellent piece of foreshadowing, and it tells us something about the protagonist, which is why Collins gets away with breaking this rule.
Opening with a dream. This is a cliche for similar reasons; it’s overused, and it wastes your reader’s time with something that doesn’t get the first scene moving, and then—uh oh—they’re waking up, and we’re back to cliche #1. Dream sequences do have their place, and this rule doesn’t mean you need to eliminate them entirely. But for your opening scene, you have a limited amount of time to introduce your character, set up the world, and get the reader hooked. Don’t spend that time on a dream—jump right in.
Opening with exposition. Exposition here refers to “lore-dumping”, which we can tie back into a piece of advice we already covered: show, don’t tell. You might have the impulse to spend your first few pages trying to explain the story/world/situation to your reader, but this isn’t enjoyable to read, and it’s just as unpleasant to write.
Most advice for writers suggests starting with action. The word “action” here doesn’t mean your first scene needs to include some kind of fast-paced chase or fight scene. All that matters for the first page is that something is happening. Drop your protagonist into the middle of a scene, ideally one that gives a snapshot of who they are and what their world looks like, and then let it play out.
Exposition should be woven into the story itself and revealed as it becomes relevant. If you’re struggling, make a list of things the reader needs to know and come up with ways to introduce them naturally in your first few scenes.
Opening with your character looking into a mirror. Frequently, new writers will try to introduce their main character by having them look in the mirror and describe themselves. It’s not wrong to encounter a mirror at some point in the story, but avoid using it right off the bat as an easy way to tell the reader how the character looks. This is a common cliche, and there are better, more interesting ways to get those details in. Show us how your character looks through action—maybe they tuck their dark hair behind their ear, or flick a ladybug off their freckled shoulder, or scrape their knobby knees.
Another good thing to remember is not to offload every detail about your characters right off the bat. Often, readers only need one or two details to get an image in their mind, and things like eye color and hair color are often less important than we think. Try to get creative with the way you introduce characters, focusing on what sets them apart and makes them interesting to look at. Think about prominent noses, or unruly curls, or a lackadaisical posture, or sharp, angular shoulders.
Getting stuck (and un-stuck)
Inevitably, you will get stuck at some point in your draft. (Probably more than once.) This is the dreaded “writer’s block” or “perfectionist’s block”. Regardless of what you call it, sometimes you run out of steam and aren’t sure where to go next. Here’s another great piece of insight from Gail Carson Levine:
Trouble often begins with the idea of a story. You have a marvelous idea, and you’re all fired up. So you start writing, and it fizzles. When this happens, it’s because ideas are ideas, and words on paper are words on paper. They’re not the same, and they never will be. The purpose of an idea is to get us excited, to get us writing. But once we start, we have to struggle with the words and with the story we’ve set in motion.
So if you need to, drop your idea and follow your story wherever it takes you.
There are many different perspectives on how to tackle this problem, and most of them are fickle. What cured your writer’s block last week might not help you today. That’s why it’s best to have a number of different methods on hand.
- Try taking a walk. Sometimes activity can get your brain moving again.
- Redirect your creativity to another outlet, like scrapbooking, songwriting, drawing, or dancing. Expressing yourself in a different way can help you get out of a rut.
- “Drop your idea”, like Levine suggests, and try going in a completely different direction. If you’re totally stuck on a specific scene, maybe it’s time to switch things up and follow your gut.
- Skip the scene (for now) and start working on the next one. Once you’ve got the creative juices flowing again, you can go back and fill in what you missed.
- Do some more brainstorming and see if that solves your problem.
- Read. Pick up a new book (or one you love) and pay attention to the writing. Sometimes enjoying someone else’s work is a great refresh and can get you back into that writerly mindset.
- Let it suck! If you’re holding yourself back because you want your writing to be perfect, abandon that expectation. Write the scene, even if it turns out awful and you can’t wait to go back and fix it. You’ll have plenty of time to when you revise.
Drafting is the longest, trickiest, most occasionally frustrating part of writing your first novel. In the process, you’ll likely run into far more obstacles than this little website can cover, so check out these resources for help along the way.