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source: laurieboris.com |
The challenge
Rather than do Resolutions I can't keep, I thought I'd kick off the New Year with a little writing challenge.This challenge comes in three parts.
So why not try that too?
So I did. I researched a few agents, found four that are a good fit – one of which I’ve worked with before, and has a taste for a bit of Folk Horror – and I wrote a query letter. That’s right, before I wrote a single word of the manuscript, I wrote a full query letter.
Why?
Well, today is Day One. So I thought I'd just dive in and see what happens.
- Write an entire novel in January.
- Edit and clean up in February (possibly – see below)
- Submit to Agents in March.
Background
One of the surprises that came out of doing a degree in Creative Writing was finding that I have strengths in areas I thought were closed off. There was one story in particular that resonated, a short piece about the son of a grave robber. Dark fiction was something I found quite difficult after Matthew passed away, but this felt good. Unlike my Victorian vampire novel, which I had peppered with humour as a kind of safety net, this was pure, dark gothic fiction with an honest, earthy folk horror feel.Gearing up
The genre of folk horror got under my skin and I found myself revisiting old classic movies like The Wicker Man (1973) and Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971) - a movie that scared the life out of me when I was nine. I rewatched modern movies in the same genre too: The Apostle (1997), The Wicker Man remake with Nicholas Cage (2006), The Ritual (2017) and the fabulous Midsommar (2019). In books, I went back to horror master, Adam Nevill, Bram Stoker (because, why wouldn't you?) and folk horror guru Andrew Michael Hurley.
At this point, I had an idea, but every time I tried to outline it, I ended up killing the idea stone dead and I couldn't work out why. But the idea was still there like a sore tooth you can't ignore...
write me... write me... write me...
How can I write something I can't plan?
Writing Into the Dark
And then yesterday, while walking the dog, I listened to a podcast interview with Dean Wesley Smith. I've mentioned Dean on this blog a few times in the past, and I'd heard of his writing process back when I used to read his blog (around the time he was Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing), but this was a nice refresher.
Dean calls his tried and trusted method Writing Into the Dark (others refer to it as Pantsing or Discovery Writing) and it's where you write without a plan. You have a premise or a basic idea, but rather than focusing on beats and trying to saving a cat, you flesh out the characters and allow the story find its own path.
And it isn't only Dean Wesley Smith that writes in this way. Writers who dive in without a plan include:
- Stephen King
- Lee Child
- Dean Koontz
- Neil Gaiman
- George R.R. Martin
- Mark Twain
- Margret Atwood
- Isaac Asimov
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Photo by Haydn Golden on Unsplash |
Maybe it's time to kick off these stabilisers and just ride. 😃
Loglines and Pitching
And so, rather than working on a plan, I sat down and thought about the kind of book I want to write. Nothing detailed, just a general flavour. To do this, I focused on writing a single logline. This is something I learned from Screenwriting, where you nail the basic premise first because you need that to pitch the idea. And in Screenwriting, you usually pitch the idea before writing the script.
So why not try that too?
So I did. I researched a few agents, found four that are a good fit – one of which I’ve worked with before, and has a taste for a bit of Folk Horror – and I wrote a query letter. That’s right, before I wrote a single word of the manuscript, I wrote a full query letter.
Why?
Because I want to know, before I start:
- Can I sell this book?
- Is this a book an agent can sell?
- Does the premise work?
- Is the premise so engaging that you must read it?
Bear in mind that agents get a lot of submissions. If you can’t capture their interest in your pitch, it doesn’t matter how good you think the book is, or how clever the twist at the end is because if it doesn't cry out, "Read me. Read me now!" it might not get read at all.
Writing a pitch is also a great way to focus on the tone of what you’re writing. If you’re writing a romcom, is the premise itself funny? Is the basic idea underpinning the whole project going to make your audience laugh? In my case, is the premise going to make you uneasy, uncomfortable? Because that’s exactly what the best folk horror does and does well.
It took a long, long time to get both the premise and the query letter done. But now that I have that, I have a real sense of the tone of the book I want to write. It's not a road map; it's more like a creased and stained picture postcard of a place that makes my skin crawl.
It took a long, long time to get both the premise and the query letter done. But now that I have that, I have a real sense of the tone of the book I want to write. It's not a road map; it's more like a creased and stained picture postcard of a place that makes my skin crawl.
Cool.
Well, today is Day One. So I thought I'd just dive in and see what happens.
I managed to write 1,938 words in one sitting. And that includes time to spend going back to clean up and polish. And it wasn't a chore. It wasn't hard and I didn't get stressed thinking about the big picture. I focused purely on scenes and this little teeny tiny piece of storytelling. It was fun. But it also shows that this is an achievable target for a daily word count.
So, where would that get me in 31 days? 60,078 words. But I’m aiming for 70,000. That means I have 68,062 more to go and only 30 days left, which means I'm going to need to write 2,269 words per day. Minimum.
That’s not bad. That's possible. An hour before work instead of breakfast telly, an hour at night before bed. That's definitely achievable.
Cycling involves writing about 500 words at a time, then going back to edit typos and polish that small chunk. But not to change. You can expand and add details, but you're not rewriting. And once that chunk is done, it's done. It's in the bank. Then you can move onto the next 500 words and so on.
What about editing and backtracking?
This is my Achilles Heel. When I draft, I constantly go back to change things. I doubt myself, I swap the order of things, switch POV and even change tense and style. But in this experiment, if I want to keep to these goals, there won’t be time. However, the Dean Wesley Smith method does allow for something called Cycling.Cycling involves writing about 500 words at a time, then going back to edit typos and polish that small chunk. But not to change. You can expand and add details, but you're not rewriting. And once that chunk is done, it's done. It's in the bank. Then you can move onto the next 500 words and so on.
The idea is by the time the first draft is complete, it should be ready to send out. I don’t know if I’m that brave, though, so I’ve kept February as a safety net. We’ll see. You only get one chance to sub an agent – and I don’t want to send out anything that isn’t my best work.
So... that’s the challenge. To write approximately 2,300 words per day of clean copy to complete a 70,000 word novel in a single month with no plan and no idea where it's going.
Maybe I should have just done a few simple resolutions instead 😂
Day 1 word count: 1,938.
68,062 words to go.
68,062 words to go.
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