Progress Update on the Novel Draft

It’s been a while since I’ve given an update on the progress of the current novel draft that I am working on. For a refresher, recall that I am trying to write 4 novel drafts between March 2015 and March 2016 (a first and second draft for 2 different novels).

I struggled for a while with the first draft of the first novel. I went through 7 restarts because I couldn’t make the story work the way I wanted. I came close to giving up and moving on to something else, but I really like the story, and I decided to press on. I’m glad I did. I think I figured out the trouble I was having. It fell into 2 categories:

1. Point of view. All along, I was writing the novel as though it was a set of notes in a notebook of the main characters, who was telling the story to some unknown audience. I kept running into problems because it felt like the main character was deliberately holding back information for no good reason. It felt unnatural. It took a long time before I figured out was that I needed to tell the story from another character’s viewpoint, one who doesn’t already know the whole story. Then it took more time to figure out who this character should be. But I finally did it, and I think things will move much better now. In fact, I think the story will be a better story because of this.
2. Framework. I have only written one other novel draft. Part of the reason I’m trying to do more is to get the practice and learn how to do it. But writing at length has been giving me trouble. Not because I can’t do it, but because I feel like I’m adding too much filler to the story that isn’t necessary. I felt like I was handling something too big. So I began to wonder if there wasn’t some way of telling the story using smaller, more management chunks. Thanks to changes in #1 above, I found a way to do this. As it now stands, I am writing the novel as a series of 5 novellas, each one flowing smoothly into the next. Each novella is essentially a stand-alone story, that allows me to work at a length that I am little more comfortable with. But in truth they are all tightly integrated, and with the exception of the first novella, you couldn’t really read a later one without having read the first one. In that sense, the novel is more like an episodic series of novellas. This, too, seems to be working better for me.

I had planned to finish up the first draft of the first novel at the end of June. I don’t think I am going to hit that mark now. More than likely, it will be closer to the end of July or early August. Of course, that throws off the rest of the schedule I had planned. On the other hand, this is intended to be a learning experience for me, and I am learning a lot about how to make longer stories work. To that end, I am very pleased.

I have no idea if this story will ultimately work; I really won’t know until I complete the second draft. But it is a story I like a lot, and I am sticking with it until it is finished.

For those wondering, I wrote about 25,000 words total in starts and restarts on the current novel draft before finally figuring out what I was doing wrong. Some folks might see those 25,000 words as wasted. I see them as invaluable practice as I attempt to learn new aspects of my craft.