Dear Ally, How Do You Write a Book
Page 10
That’s what rewriting is for.
When you’re able to stand at the end of the book and look back over the whole thing—that’s when you’ll see the places where you need to seed in the little hints or tie up loose ends.
I do this with every book, but it was especially important when writing my Heist Society series. In the second book, Uncommon Criminals, I just couldn’t figure out how I was going to get my characters out of the place they were going to rob (with the priceless emerald, of course). I went through several drafts before I realized that if I just made two of the characters identical twins I could pull off one of my favorite plot twists of all time—and save the emerald, too.
That was it—just one little change that changed everything. I like to call these “linchpin” pieces, and they’re essential to making most of my stories turn. And they almost never turn up until draft two or three!
The good news is, you have as many drafts as you need to get this right. No one is expecting it to be perfect right off the bat, so my advice is to stop expecting it of yourself.
What’s the best writing advice you ever got?
Marie Lu Don’t be afraid to write something bad. It’s more important to finish that first draft, because you can’t make a blank page better.
Well, I suppose that depends on the corner, so I’m afraid I can’t offer any specifics, but I can say that this is the goal.
This is always the goal!
With every story, the reader should reach a point where they can’t possibly see how the character is going to make it out of that corner. And then it’s up to you to get them out of it. I’m sorry to break it to you, but that’s the job.
Sometimes you’ll figure it out early on—before you even start writing. Sometimes you’ll write the entire first draft and still not know what the fix is. Sometimes you’ll still be working on the perfect solution on draft ten.
Just know that it’s never easy—not for anyone. But do you know what’s worse than not knowing how to get your character out of their problem? Not giving your characters any problems to begin with.
So don’t shy away from conflict and problems and corners. In the long run, corners are your friend.
The best plot twists that I have ever written came to me after I’d already started the book—sometimes right at the very moment that the twist itself happened, and I was just as surprised as the readers. Sometimes I knew some twisty thing was going to happen, but I didn’t have it figured out just yet.
Sometimes I had a really cool, really awesome plot twist all planned out in my mind and then, when it came time to put it on paper, it just didn’t work at all.
So if you have a plot twist in mind when you start out, great! Start laying the groundwork for it and planting the seeds (because it’s just cheating to have the murderer be someone the reader never met and could never have suspected!).
But keep in mind that your twist might change. Your plot may evolve. And something even better might occur to you at some point along the way.
Also, remember that not every book needs a plot twist. They’re great when they happen, but if they don’t happen, just focus on making the plot points that you do have as interesting and compelling as possible.
If your plot stalls … if your story lags … if your characters have a goal and yet they don’t have anything to do, then it’s possible that what your story needs is a MacGuffin.
But what is a MacGuffin? Well, in the immortal words of the great director Alfred Hitchcock, a MacGuffin is nothing. And yet, it’s also everything.
Simply put, MacGuffin is the name of the item that everyone wants and the plot hinges on. The One Ring. The Sorcerer’s Stone. The Holy Grail. These are just some of the famous MacGuffins that have been driving stories since the dawn of time.
Sometimes the MacGuffin will be a lost love letter or a microchip with the name of the traitorous spy. Sometimes it will be an item of vast magical power, and sometimes it will be something incredibly sentimental and important only to your characters.
But the only thing that matters is that your MacGuffin has to be the thing that your characters want. And need. And will do almost anything to get/keep/recover/protect. You get the idea.
In my Heist Society series, the MacGuffins were the things that the crew needed to steal. In Not If I Save You First, the MacGuffin is actually Logan, the president’s son who has been kidnapped by the villain and has to be saved by the heroine.
MacGuffins drive conflict by putting the good guys and the bad guys at odds, battling to control one physical item of great importance. They are the reason we set out on a quest or break into the CIA or befriend the meanest girl in school just so we can get something out of her locker.
Now, it’s important to note that not every story can—or should—have a MacGuffin. But if you find your plot is stalled and your characters don’t have much to do, try coming up with a literal, physical item that both sides need.
Remember, conflict is gas in the tank. And a good MacGuffin can go a long way toward getting you to The End.
I probably spend more time on plot than any other part of the process because, for me, plot is where characters and world come together. Whether you write by the seat of your pants or plot the whole thing out in advance, just don’t forget that conflict is what keeps your story moving forward. And stakes are the reason it all matters.
So think about all the reasons your characters have to succeed. Then think about all the ways they can fail. Whether you’re a pantser or a plotter, if you put those two things together, you’ve got the makings of a plot!
Are you a plotter or a pantser?
Shannon Hale Depends on the book! I’ve discovered that I’m not rigid in my work habits. I don’t need to work in a particular place or time of day or style or genre or whatever. I’ve started with a sentence and followed it to find a whole book; I’ve created 20K-word chapter-by-chapter outlines and written from that; and I’ve done everything in between. I firmly believe there’s no right or wrong way. For me, it’s figuring out what feels right at this particular moment for this particular story.
Marie Lu Pantser.
Melissa de la Cruz Plotter.
Daniel José Older Pantser for LIFE.
Elizabeth Eulberg Plotter.
Julie Murphy A little bit of both!
Stephanie Perkins Plotter.
Alex London A hybrid. I start by the seat of my pants, panic at about 15,000 words, and start making outlines then, which I often stray from again and again and again.
Sarah Rees Brennan Plotter! Except for a little pants embroidery around the plot.
Jesse Andrews Both somehow. More of a pantser, I guess.
Alan Gratz Plotter!
Soman Chainani Pantser.
Holly Black I want to be a plotter, but I do a lot of “discovery writing” despite my best intentions.
Kiersten White Both.
Maggie Stiefvater I pants plottily or plot pantsily. I can’t tell anymore.
Zoraida Córdova Plotter.
Gordon Korman Plotter.
Rachel Caine Hybrid! I make a relatively small outline that I don’t necessarily follow to the letter.
Dhonielle Clayton I am neither one of those. I am a headlights writer. I’m a plotter and a pantser but can see only a few feet in front of me.
Eliot Schrefer Plotter.
Z Brewer I was a pantser for years but learned how to be a plotter because it makes less work in the end and frees me up to just ride the wave.
It’s incredibly important that I say this up front and often: Every writer has a different process. In fact, every book has a different process! There’s no one way to do this, so if someone ever tells you “this is the best way to write a book,” turn around and run because that person is mistaken.
I know writers who write meticulous outlines that are almost as long as their books.
And I know writers who sit down and go and don’t look back.
I know write
rs who rewrite and tweak and perfect every paragraph before they move on to the next one.
And I know writers who don’t even glance back until they’ve got a whole draft down.
I know writers who write longhand or type single-spaced or do an entire draft with “Track Changes” on, just to trick themselves into thinking they’re doing a rewrite and not a first draft.
Writers are always looking for a shortcut, a scheme, a plan, a strategy, so that this time it will be easy. But it’s never easy. And we know that. Still, we keep playing mind games with ourselves—anything that helps to get us to The End.
Pretty much every writer I know has tried a bunch of different things. Some of them work. Some of them don’t. But we keep trying anyway because, as we say in this business, you never really learn to write a book; you just learn to write the book you’re writing right now.
So there is no one way to do this. But in this section, I’ll write about how some of my friends and I do this. Maybe that will help you figure out how you should do it, too.
DEAR MELISSA DE LA CRUZ,
What’s your process? Are you a plotter or a pantser?
I am very much a plotter. But I also like to surprise myself, so I often dismiss the first thing that comes to mind for a twist, knowing that that’s the first thing a reader will think as well. You want to surprise your readers, which is very hard to do. You really have to work at it, which means rewriting the ending many, many times until it works.
Well, as I said, there’s no one way to do this! But in case anyone is interested, this is the way I do it. (Which, for the record, probably won’t be the way you will—or should—do it.)
STEP 1. GET AN IDEA. Struggle with the idea for usually several months. Then settle on the idea and dig in.
STEP 2. STORYBOARD THE PLOT (see “Developing Your Plot”) and try to figure out as much of the action as possible.
STEP 3. WRITE A SCREENPLAY. Yes. You read that correctly. I’m a huge outlier because the first drafts of my novels are pretty much always screenplays. I’ve only heard of one other author doing this, so it certainly isn’t the norm but it’s what works for me.
Why?
Well, you see, I started writing screenplays when I was in college and grad school, so my “dirty water books” are really screenplays. Are any of them any good? Nope. But when my agent suggested one of those screenplays might make a good novel, I started adapting it and realized it was some of the easiest writing I’d ever done. The whole story was laid out for me—with dialogue! I just had to fill in the writing part. So now I do that every time.
Why not just outline? Well, because I’m terrible at outlining. I know. I’ve tried it! You see, to me, everything sounds good in an outline. I genuinely won’t know if something is awesome or weird or weirdly awesome until I get it on the page.
Screenplays are just action and dialogue—no pretty prose, no character descriptions or super-detailed fight scenes—so they’re a quick way of getting the key plot points, settings, characters, etc., on the page. That makes them an efficient way of telling the weird from the weirdly awesome, in other words. So that’s what I do first. And it can take me a month or so just to get most of the story hammered out.
STEP 4. WRITE A REALLY ROUGH FIRST DRAFT. And I do mean really rough. Usually, I’ll leave my house every day and go to a local restaurant where they know me (and kind of feel sorry for me toward the end). I take my AlphaSmart (more on that in a bit) and write pretty much every day for long stretches of time, usually three to six hours at a time with very few breaks.
Because I’m working off those screenplay pages and not starting from scratch, I can have incredibly productive days. (On Not If I Save You First, I probably averaged well over 3,000 words per day, which is a lot by most standards.) At that rate, I can finish a 60,000-word book in twenty days. Which means, once I start writing, I can often have a first draft in a month or so.
THIS IS NOT AVERAGE.
In fact, when I read that, even I get really, really freaked out and intimidated. Please don’t think you have to write this way. And please don’t be too terribly impressed.
Why? Because that first draft probably won’t make a lot of sense. That first draft will include subplots that will get cut later and characters that aren’t fully fleshed out and, usually, a conclusion that doesn’t even start to work.
But the first draft will exist and that is a first draft’s only job (in my process).
STEP 5. SHOW MY FIRST DRAFT TO MY EDITOR to get notes on the plot and the general direction of the novel.
STEP 6. WRITE A SECOND DRAFT. Honestly, this is, for me, where the hard work begins. At this point, stuff is starting to get real. What I write at this point stands a really good chance of ending up in the finished book, and that’s both awesome (no more blank page!) but also terrifying (what if people hate it?).
STEP 7. CRY. Seriously. At any point along here, it’s totally okay to cry. A lot.
STEP 8. DO MORE DRAFTS. I’ll work for several months getting the book where I like it before I send it to my editor again.
STEP 9. REPEAT STEPS 5–8 AS NECESSARY, until my editor and I both think it’s pretty good.
STEP 10. DO A LINE EDIT. This is where my editor and I go through the book line by line. It’s painstaking. It’s tedious. And it’s soooooooo worth it because, in my opinion, this is where a book can go from good to great. This is the point where you look at a sentence that has ten words and ask yourself, “Can this be better said with six?” This is the point where you look at a really pretty sentence and say to yourself, “I said basically the same thing three pages ago, so should I cut this? I should probably cut this.”
This is the point where you make sure every single word makes the book better. If it doesn’t serve a purpose, cut it. Initially, I always find this hard, but by the end I’m drunk on power and cutting everything I can because I’m weird like that.
STEP 11. SEND THE BOOK TO MY PUBLISHER TO BE COPYEDITED AND TYPESET. This is when you work with a different editor than the one you’ve been working with all along. A “copy editor” is really a specialist who will go through the manuscript with a finetoothed comb and will answer things like “should that be fine-toothed?” “Fine tooth”? See? I don’t know. But eventually I’ll have a copy editor coming along behind me, helping me out.
STEP 13. DO PAGE PROOFS. Page proofs are the very last pass you will ever do of your novel. At this point, you won’t be working in Microsoft Word anymore. This time you’ll get a file where your book looks exactly like a real book. It will have fancy fonts and pretty interior art and all that fun stuff. It will be your job to do one last pass and make sure everything is perfect!
Because you will never, ever edit that book again. And if you and the proofreaders miss a typo … well … then you’d better get ready to live with it because there’s no going back.
STEP 12. TAKE A NAP. The book is finished.
Again, in no way, shape, or form am I saying this is the best process. I can’t even guarantee that when I start my next book, this will be my process. But this is how I’ve been doing it for the past few years, and if something in there appeals to you, try it. You won’t know what your process is until you write!
STEP 13. START THINKING ABOUT YOUR NEXT NOVEL.
What’s the best writing advice you ever got?
Daniel José Older After you finish something and submit it, take a break and then start something new.
This is another one of those things that is going to vary a lot, depending on who you talk to. I know writers who might write the last chapter before they write the first. Then they might move on to chapter 17 or 14, or 40. They just write the scenes as they come, and that process works for them. Which is totally valid.
You have one job, and that’s to find the process that works for you.
But I’m the kind of writer who needs to start at the beginning and write until I hit The End. Always. I can’t even revise out of order. Every single draft
starts at page one and goes through to the end.
There are a lot of reasons why this works for me. First, because that’s what feels natural. And a big part of this business is finding your groove and then sticking with it.
The other thing I like about writing in order is that no matter how much planning and plotting I might do, I’m always surprised when I start writing. Always. And that’s a good thing! (After all, if the author is surprised by a plot twist, the reader probably will be, too!)
So I can’t jump around if I don’t know exactly where I’m going.
It’s also important to remember that you’re not just writing a plot. You’re also writing characters. And characters have emotions and relationships and ups and downs, and those things are fluid, constantly changing—those things have to be consistent from one scene to the next, and writing in order is the best way I know to put myself in the frame of mind my characters were in in the last scene—to have just written it.
Maybe that’s not the case for you. Maybe writing out of order is going to be your process. But I do want to offer one word of caution.
When I have the urge to write out of order, it’s usually because there are scenes I’m just not very excited to write, so I want to skip them. Because they’re boring. But boring scenes don’t need to be skipped. Boring scenes need to be cut or fixed.
As I say elsewhere in this book, there’s no room in this business for “filler,” so if you’ve got scenes you’re not very excited to write, think about why that is and ask yourself if that also means no one will be excited to read them.
But maybe you’re skipping around because that’s just the way your brain—and your process—works. And honestly, you won’t know until you try. So keep trying!