But choose some, because you absolutely need a writing goal if you’re ever going to finish your monster, and if you have a goal, you’ll need a word bucket to hold your smaller, daily or weekly “chunks.” No barf jokes will be inserted here. You're welcome.
How Fast Can You Fill a Word Bucket?
This will be different for every writer, and it will also vary by time of day, your bucket size, how many kids you have interrupting, what kind of content you’re writing, and how many M&Ms you have lined up as filled-bucket rewards.
The main trick to filling word buckets is that you can't think about what you want to write. You have to write about what you want to write. That’s why our Badass Writing Motto is, “Write Dammit,” and not, “Think Dammit.”
And even though some days are better than others, writing is like any skill; the longer you do it the better and faster you get. The two of us agree that the following is about where we find ourselves:
Blazing fast: You can consistently write 1k words/1 hour
Medium fast: You can consistently write 1k words/2 hours
Normal but slower: You typically write 1k words/3-4 hours
By the way, I just passed the 1k word bucket point for this chapter... After you do this for a while, you’ll have a feel for it, even if you don't have a word counter happily ticking away at the bottom of your page.
Where Should You Apply Your Word Buckets?
The following assignment will take you through both a fleshed-out non-fiction outline and a fiction outline, with ideas for how you might assign your word buckets to each part.
Assignment 6: Goals and Timelines for Fleshing Out Your Non-Fiction Book
If you’re writing non-fiction and you have 10 chapters in your outline, pick the one that feels “easiest” and bang it out. My non-fiction chapters tend to run between 1k and 3k, so if I am setting up chapter word count goals in Scrivener I put it at 2k, write, and see how it turns out.
Sometimes a chapter goes too long, or seems to want to split into two parts. You can let your book talk to you like this, but in order to hear what it has to say you must write. I start with the easiest bits, because it makes me feel good and gives me a sense of momentum.
Of course, this may not fit exactly with the particular book you have in mind, but it will give you a good idea of a common book pattern.
IDEA & OUTLINE STAGE: Finished! (if you did Assignment 4)
If you didn’t already do Assignment 4, you are 5 minutes from completing this section of your book. Awesomesauce.
CHAPTER STAGE (approx. 20k total words): Finish by_________________
Now that you have an outline, you can set word bucket and timeline goals for each part. If you want help with assigning word buckets to each section, you'll see below a sample outline (straight out of Assignment 4, you can look back for reference) that should get you started.
Introduction (5k words): Finish by_________________
Problem
Underlying issues
The stakes
Benefits
About you
The Guts (10k words): Finish by_________________
Item/step one
Item/step two
Item/step three
Item/step four
Item/step five
Tying Up Loose Ends (5k words): Finish by_________________
Extras
Troubleshooting or common problems
Further resources
Closing
EDITS & REVISIONS: Finish by_________________
Read over your first draft and make any initial revisions you need.
Ask someone else to read your draft and suggest revisions.
Prepare your last draft, and ask for a final read-over.
Assignment 7: Goals and Timelines for Fleshing Out A “Hero's Journey” Book
If you’re writing fiction, it’s a bit more complex, but still involves (guess what!) writing, dammit.
Take a look at the very common word-bucket-application process below. I'm using a classic “hero's journey” outline, and assuming you’ve done some basic reference work in advance. There are some “finish by” blanks so that you can actually set some timeline goals.
Don’t worry if this particular process doesn’t seem to fit you or your book; there are plenty of ways to catch unicorns that don’t require virgins (regardless of what you’ve been told). This is just one to get you thinking.
IDEA STAGE: Finish by_________________
One Sentence Stories:
Write 3 to 10 one-sentence versions of stories. Each one should have a character, an action, and a consequence or goal. Don't take longer than 5 minutes to write each one. If you need to “prime the pump,” go back and read the section on 5-minute outlines, and nutshell a few books (or movies) you've read before. Then do your own.
After you write a handful of them, go back and rearrange or add details, changing any particular piece you like.
The Paragraph Stories:
Now look over your sentences and choose one to be your story. Write a single paragraph that elaborates on the sentence. Sleep on it, then go back and make any changes you want.
GROUNDWORK STAGE (10k words): Finish by_________________
Now choose one paragraph-length story that you're going to be turning into a book, and spend a bit of time doing basic set-up work on it. If you think 1k buckets are too infernally big, make them 500-word buckets instead. This is still groundwork, and the content will find its way into your book, but this is mostly reference.
The Beginning (5k words): Finish by_________________
Write a 1k study telling about your story world.
Write a 1k character study introducing your lead character.
Why should your reader want to keep reading to get to the middle? Write a 1k study to tell what very compelling, dangerous, or unusual things are going to be happening, which the reader absolutely must keep reading to find out about.
What is trying to prevent your character from succeeding in their goal? Write a 1k character study to introduce the villain or opposition.
Use 1k to write about three supporting characters who will feature largely in your story. Note who will help and who will hinder the lead character. One might be a “mentor” figure...
The Middle (3-4k words): Finish by_________________
This part will be about the big confrontation, battles, and fights. Write 1k or an outline of what the action will be.
This will also be where your reader will learn more about your main character. Make a numbered list, with added information below each point, telling what new things the reader will learn about the main character. Some things may be marvelous shining points of honorable goodness, others may be less savory. These will be things even the character may not know.
The set-up for the big battle is important! Make at least 1k of notes about what disaster or unforeseen circumstance causes everyone to have to completely change their plan. What major reversal or mess will you put your characters in? (Even you may not be sure they’ll make it out of this one...)
The End (1-2k words): Finish by_________________
Write your notes about how the novel will end. This includes an enormous mental, relational, physical, and/or spiritual battle of some kind. If you have a subplot or two, be sure to note how that will turn out.
BONUS: Titles or Scenes: Finish by_________________
Can you go ahead and name all the chapters, or create a list of “scenes?” Read through your groundwork material, then look over the next section, where I've listed some of the standard stages in a hero’s journey story. This will help you organize your book.
MANUSCRIPT STAGE (50k words): Finish by_________________
This is the point at which you take all the groundwork you’ve done and turn it from a wooden puppet into a real boy. At least you try. Your puppet will have many adventures before it actually gets a hefty shot of juju from the Blue Fairy and miraculously comes to life. Me
anwhile, write dammit.
If you want word bucket goals to help you get started, simply assign 5k to each of the numbers below, and see how it goes.
Introduce your hero’s world.
Describe the disturbance. Something dire or dramatic happens to launch your character on this journey. Your lead my try to ignore the clear call to act. What gets worse as a result? What finally makes the hero take action?
Tell how the hero crosses a mental or physical barrier and enters the darkness/difficulty/trial.
A mentor may appear to the hero. Do they like each other immediately, or are they uncertain? (Don’t make everything easy for your hero...)
Write about each battle that happens.
Tell about the hero’s “darkest moment” — a time when he/she must confront something inside himself/herself in order to make it through the trials.
Reveal the powerful talisman (if there is one) that will aid in the final battle.
Now bring things to the final battle.
Tell what it’s like when the hero returns to their world.
EDITS & REVISIONS: Finish by_________________
Read over your first story draft and make any initial revisions you need.
Ask someone else to read your story draft and suggest revisions.
Prepare your last draft, and ask for a final read-over.
This is extremely simplified, but it gives you a good idea of one way to get through the process. Sometimes part of the problem with writing a book is just that it feels so overwhelming. This cuts the process down to size and shows how really simple it can be. And no virgins were even needed to find the unicorn.
As with all writing, you’re going to find that your fiction writing process may be extremely different from someone else’s process, and that your process from one book to another might change dramatically. That’s okay. If you know what your process is, go and do that. If you don’t, we’ve provided you with some processes to try here. Keep working, keep iterating, and just keep writing dammit.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Plotters and Pantsers: Make Your Fiction Writing Style Work For You
This chapter is mostly for the fiction writers, so if you’re not interested, you have our permission to skip ahead. We’ll meet you in the next chapter. For the fiction writers, if you read the last chapter, you at least have something written on a bar napkin, or a MadLib-style sentence of what your book is about. You probably even have a hero’s journey outline! Awesome! If you’re still having trouble seeing how all this will be a novel, don't worry. We’ll get through this together.
In the fiction writing world, we tend to divide ourselves up into two distinct groups (yeah, I know dividing the universe into two groups again, but hang with me): the plotters and the pantsers.
The plotters — well… — plot. They outline, they plan, they do all the anal-retentive things you might expect. They tend to love fancy indentations, color coding, charts, graphs, and spreadsheets. Remember the plot-driven writers we talked about in the last chapter? They tend to be plotters like this (but not always).
The pantsers write by the seat of their pants, hence the term. They tend to be character-driven writers (but not always), and the idea of knowing the end before the end happens makes them a little queasy. You may hear them say, “If I know how the book ends, I’m not interested in writing it anymore.”
You probably already identified yourself as one of the two of those in just the time it took you to read that short intro. I have tips for you coming up.
If you don’t have any idea whether you are a plotter or a pantser, that’s okay, too. It either means that you’re still finding your process (which is a continual journey for me!) or you’re a fairly even combination of both and can probably do either well. (I am very jealous of you.)
Both methods are valid, and both methods can drive you crazy if you let them. And you know what? Sometimes it's worth it to give a different method a try once in a while. This chapter is meant to expand your horizons a bit. If you're a plotter, try pantsing for a while. If you're a pantser, see if you can figure out how Excel works and get something planned out.
Here are some hints for you.
How to Plot Without Going Nuts
If you’re a pantser, the very thought of plotting out your story probably kind of makes you itch. Talk of spreadsheets and timelines and family trees makes your eyes bulge uncomfortably. You have an idea, and you just want to see where it takes you! Plotting takes all the fun out of it. Why write it at all if you already know how it’s going to end?
If this works for you, do it. Don’t stop here to read about how to plot. Go write some more. You are one of those lucky people who probably plots everything organically, without really knowing how you do it. (The plotters among us are green with envy.)
But, if this is you and you sometimes run into trouble, let me tell you why a plot outline might help you before you run screaming into the night.
1. Plot outlines help you get started.
Here’s a secret: You don’t have to plot out the whole book. Try just plotting what’s going to happen in the next chapter or scene, so you know where you’re going to start when you pick back up tomorrow. It can even be as simple as a sentence, like, “Marjorie discovers that Phil has been in disguise this whole time and is really the Evil Lord Dan.”
2. Plotting can help you avoid some revising.
It’s true that plotters still have to revise. But knowing how things are supposed to end up gives you the ultimate power of being able to put foreshadowing in your first draft, for example. Or you can drop little clues about who the real killer is that will make the reader exclaim, “Of course! I should have known!” when you reveal it at the end.
3. You don’t have to do your plot outline at the beginning.
Whoever told you that you must do your plot outline at the beginning was probably a plotter. But it’s not really true. You can write until you run out of things to write and then plot from there if you want to. Hell, you can write the whole book and then do a plot outline to help you figure out where you need to make revisions.
In elementary school, I had a teacher who was trying to teach the class how to outline, you know, with the Roman numerals and capital letters and everything. I was a natural at it because that’s how I am, but there were kids in the class literally pulling their hair out trying to figure it out. One of my friends just wrote her whole essay and then went back and did the outline later.
You are not in elementary school anymore. If it works better for you, do it that way. I won’t tell the teacher.
So how do you do a plot outline if you’re a pantser? Well, you like to make things up as you go, so just make up plotting as you go. If you feel like writing in different colored pens on notebook paper, do that. If you feel like putting everything on a sticky note and then rearranging them on the floor, do that. The point is that there is no right way to outline. Find something that works for you, and don’t be scared to try new ways.
Assignment 8: Plot Without Plotting
If you're already a Plotter McPlotterson, skip ahead to Assignment 9. If you're not usually a plotter, but you want to get unstuck, try something new.
1. Write It Down
On whatever you’re working on right now, set a timer and take one minute to write down what you’re going to write in the immediate next chapter or scene. Don't worry about formatting. It can be a sentence, a bulleted list, a poem — whatever.
2. Plot For Fun
Think of a book you’re writing now, or even one you’ve already finished, if plotting your work-in-progress is too intimidating.
Take a moment to brainstorm some plotting strategies that sound fun to you — yes, fun. If office supplies make you giddy, try plotting with sticky notes and Washi tape. Are you a historian at heart? Maybe a timeline is the way to go. Make a list of all the wacky plotting methods you can think of.
Pick the one that sounds like the most fun.
Do it! Plot some shit, son. Don’t go to the store and buy a bunch of supplies, though, you procrastinator. Use what you have and make it work. You don’t have to plot the full book, and you can plot stuff that’s already written, but take a few minutes and try it out.
Now that wasn’t so bad, was it? Maybe it was even (gasp) sort of fun. I now give you permission to go to the office supply store and skip happily through the aisles, picking out the tools for plotting next time that will make you actually want to do it.
What To Do If You Don't Have a Plot
I am, by nature, a plotter. I plan pretty much every aspect of my life, including what I write. That’s not to say that everything always goes according to plan, but I’m paralyzed without some idea of where to go and what to do. But most years I participate in National Novel Writing Month, which is a month-long, ass-hauling, super-fast draft-writing frenzy that pretty much requires a little pantsing. So how do I make myself do it?
I plot like a pantser. If you’re a plotter too, but you are stuck, stuck, stuck, and ready to give up on the whole project because you just can’t seem to make it go, maybe it’s time you tried plotting like a pantser.
Here are my tips for getting started:
1. Go day by day.
Plan what you’re going to write in the morning when you start, or plan the next day’s writing the evening before.
Bagels, Dirty Limericks, and Martinis: The Badass Guide to Writing Your First Book (Badass Writing) Page 6