 | 13 Jan 09 |
Color me converted. I didn’t think it could happen. I fought it from the first, but necessity and a deadline forced a change and, ladies and gents, I am here to testify: there just might be a better way. Is it the way? I’m not enough of a evangelist (yet) to make that pronouncement, but I now know that there is another way to write a book. Allow me to share how I finally saw the light and embraced…the discovery draft.
For about eight years and twenty-some books, my writing process has been virtually the same. I have always edited as I’ve written, making substantive changes to completed scenes as the story evolved. If I decided to take a different direction with the character or plot, I went back to the completed scenes that were affected and rewrote them before I moved on. I re-worked every scene to a shine before I started the next one, often ending up rewriting that shiny scene because I changed the story.
This process – the Edit-As-You-Go approach – is painful to me. The constant revision throws me into doubt spirals that make me certain I’m writing The Worst Book Ever. It feels like two steps forward, three steps back, making the trip to The End long and miserable. However, I love revisions. I mean, listen to me: I love revisions.
Therefore, when I first heard the concept of a “discovery draft” all the hairs on my body stood at attention with delight. The discovery draft (aka Book In an Insanely Short Amount of Time) technique is to “vomit” up a first draft quickly, find out who the characters are, what motivates them, what their conflict is, how it is resolved. Then you take this rough draft and spend all of your lovely weeks and months prior to deadline day doing nothing but revising, rewriting, polishing and perfecting. Hear the angels sing. This is heaven.
Seriously, I really don’t know how to tell you how much this concept appealed to me. Like wine on a Friday night at six o’clock. Like a pair of pink suede Stuart Weitzman pumps marked down. Like Daniel Craig almost naked on a beach with a margarita in one hand and me in the other.
But try as I might, I couldn’t do the discovery draft. Something about moving on when a scene isn’t quite right goes utterly against my grain. For me, plot points and dialogue and narrative are two-directional dominoes and if you take the story in one direction, it affects every single scene that comes after it and a whole lot before.
With each manuscript, I tried and failed the discovery draft method, falling back to my old clunky style, believing that my writer’s brain is hardwired that way and listening to those who said “If it works for you, Rocki, don’t change it.” But, honey, I hate it – so is that “working” for me?
And then, three months ago, I started a new book, due on January 15, two days from today. I knew it was going to be a tight squeeze, but I felt pretty confident I could make it. In October, I wrote a little, playing with plot and characters and openings, writing and abandoning several versions to end the month with about 12,000 words. Okay, no panic. Beginnings are tough. Except the same thing happened in November. By December 1st, I had less than 100 pages of a manuscript I’d started and changed so many times I couldn’t remember which version I was writing, and six (OMG – SIX) weeks left. Oh, and did I mention that my publisher moved the book up a month so that I could have back-to-back releases, meaning there’s no give in the deadline?
And, this is DECEMBER, people. I’ve got a family, kids included. They want festive trees, beautifully wrapped gifts, full-house décor, frosted gingerbread men (each one unique with their own backstory – hey, it’s our tradition!) and some attention for those twenty-two con-sec-u-tive days they’re not in school. I had no choice this time. I couldn’t edit as I went along, because I needed to figure out the big picture of the story and finish the damn book.
So, I wrote a discovery draft. I never edited, I never looked back. Every once in a while, I knew a scene wasn’t just “off” but it was seriously wrong, I would rewrite it. Many times the story turned, as stories do, and I knew the change would require fixing/editing scenes that were already done, so I started my own page of revision notes, reminding myself what needed to be changed in earlier chapters, but barreling forward. I wrote about 60,000 words in December and finished a draft by January 5th, leaving me ten days to edit and revise.
Revisions would be the real litmus test for this new process. I knew there were cringeworthy scenes in that book. I knew there was a huge element that I had introduced in the last 50 pages that had to be woven in gracefully to the first 300. But I also knew exactly how the story ended and what the theme and conflict of the book actually turned out to be.
Guess what happened, my friends? Revisions turned out to be not just easy, but fun! Possibly the best time I’ve ever had in a chair. Even though about 82,000 of the 93,000 words are completely new, revising and rewriting engages a different part of my brain and, evidently, that’s a happy part.
The book is done, ready to fly to New York on time, on target, on Thursday, January 15. Hallelujah!
So, will I do it again? I sure aim to try. Does your process hurt? Do you want to change it? Is it time to find a better way? Or, have you successfully changed your process of any creative endeavor and lived to tell the tale? Let’s hear about it!
I’m here to tell you that I always suspected that there could be Nirvana in writing, and this time, after going through hell twenty-three times, I found it. Amen to that.
© 2009 Roxanne St. Claire. All rights reserved.
Roxanne St. Claire is a bestselling, RITA-Award winning author of twenty-four novels of romance and suspense. For the past several years, she's been writing a popular romantic suspense series called “The Bullet Catchers” for Pocket Star Books, featuring a cadre of bodyguards and security professionals. In 2010, she's launching a new series, "The Guardian Angelinos" focusing on an extended family of renegade crime fighters and investigators based in Boston. The first book in that series, EDGE OF SIGHT, will be released from Grand Central Publishing in November, 2010, with two more scheduled in 2011. In addition to the RITA, her books have won the National Reader’s Choice Award, the Daphne Du Maurier Award, the Maggie Award, the Booksellers Best, the Book Buyers Best, The HOLT Medallion, multiple Awards of Excellence, and Borders “Top Pick” for Romance in 2007.
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I’m one who follows your original method of writing, editing as I go. Yes, it does slow me down. Yes, it can hurt by nitpicking early on when the story needs to be regurged, not tweaked.
by Margaret A. Golla January 13th, 2009 at 5:50 amBUT, I’ve just started writing the first book in a series and I HAVE to get it right for book 1. I HAVE to really know my secondary characters as well as my protag.
And I’m on my bazillionth rewrite of the first 30 pages. I have an awesome CP (AKA arkansascyndi) who is helping me ground my characters. I think she wants me to sell this series as much as I do!
Anyhoo, once I fix the characters, I’m going to try the ‘discovery draft’.
Margaret, I wanted to talk about the characters in this blog, but that section of the post got so long, I decided to separate it and handle it as a stand alone blog on character discovery. Bottom line, I do not know my characters when I start and I doubt this aspect of my process will change. I truly discover them in the writing, hence SO MUCH rewriting once I do. It seems like ms page 100-ish is the magic place where they start to really take shape.
Good luck with the book – you’re in good cp hands with Miss Cyndi!
by Roxanne St. Claire January 13th, 2009 at 6:30 amI’m definitely an edit as you go girl, but I enjoy the editing process. It’s the fresh writing that causes me pain. Still, the whole pink suede pumps and half-naked Daniel Craig bit is very seductive.
by Kristen January 13th, 2009 at 6:20 amYou’re just a pink shoe slut and my goodness do I love that about you.
Fresh writing = pain. No doubt about it.
by Roxanne St. Claire January 13th, 2009 at 6:31 amThe only way I would have finished my first Tali Cates mystery was when I finally said, no more revisions, push through the first draft, finish it and then revise. Revisions are so much faster that way and you have a finished book. Its worked for me for my second novel and both novellas. It seems to be the only way I can work.
by Carol Shenold January 13th, 2009 at 6:39 amWow, Rocki. I’m v. impressed! I might have to try it again. I technically need to write 3 books this year and I think the only way possible is to do what you did.
I have a few questions.
Did you do any character/story development prior to writing? Or did you just jump in?
How many days did you spend planning out the characters?
Rachel
by Rachel Hauck January 13th, 2009 at 7:58 amHey Rachel – I do have some story development done because I have to write a general outline for my editor before starting. That said, I never stick to it, not even close. She knows that and after a dozen books together, she’s comfortable that I can write a book even if it is completely different from what I proposed. Unless I do a drastic premise/main character switch (which I have done), I don’t alert her every time the story concept changes. But I do know the general direction and story premise.
I don’t do any formal “character interviews” but I usually have a few main traits that are like anchors when I start. (She’s inquisitive to a fault or he uses humor to mask hurt…whatever.) I rarely know WHY – motivation is something that is revealed as I write. Also, the story premise is usually based on some major element of my characters, creating conflict. (For example, on this book it is “former thief turned Bullet Catcher has to guard treasure on a salvage dive and find the thief on board…who is the Robin Hood-type heroine looking for a truly good man.)
So that’s what I have before I jump in. That takes several days of actual writing, but could take weeks and weeks of “cogitating” – often when I’m still finishing the book before. Right now, as I finish this revision and get ready to submit this book, I’m already thinking about my next characters. Nothing formal, just letting people brew and take shape in my head.
Like I said, it takes about 20,000 words until I really start to chisel away and a real character emerges. When it happens, though, there’s definitely a lightbulb moment of “Oh! That’s who he is….and why.” Usually, the groundwork for that character has been laid in dialogue and action, subconsciously formed as I write. Still, once I really know the character, I always have to heavily revise the early scenes.
Does that help?
by Roxanne St. Claire January 13th, 2009 at 8:10 amHelps a lot. I have a lot of discovery in writing too. But I feel like I’m stalling, trying to map it all out first. Just get writing!
I’m so thrilled this worked for you. I’m anxious to hear what your editor and agent say.
Rachel
by Rachel Hauck January 13th, 2009 at 9:30 amYeah, funny how the editor and agent’s opinion matters like that! LOL. Seriously, I don’t ever “love” a book until my editor does. I hold my breath until then, and this time will be NO different.
by Roxanne St. Claire January 13th, 2009 at 9:34 amOh, me, too! Once she likes it, I don’t care about anyone else! LOL.
by Rachel Hauck January 13th, 2009 at 11:36 amAfter dickering around with a book for 4 years because it had to be perfect and I had to know their GMC and I had to know the characters inside out, I participated in NaNoWriMo last November and vomited 50K words in 29 days. Now I just need another silly deadline to force me into writing the last two chapters. Well, actually I do have a deadline and it ain’t silly. I want my PRO pin before conference and I want the book finished and polished so I can pitch it in DC.
The book ain’t perfect by a long shot. Even as I wrote chapter eleven, I knew I was contradicting something I wrote in chapter three, but I told myself “You can fix it LATER.”
I’m definitely going the discovery draft route from now on.
You can have the pink shoes, but I’ll take Daniel Craig off your hands.
by Marilyn January 13th, 2009 at 8:05 amFinish the last two chapters, get that PRO pin, and I’ll give you Daniel.
by Roxanne St. Claire January 13th, 2009 at 8:32 amDeal!
by Marilyn January 13th, 2009 at 11:40 pmRocki, I have a MS that I started in 1993. It STILL isn’t finished. Every time I work on it, I read through it to refresh my memory, start editing and never get to the chapter where I left off.
Three years ago, a friend challenged me to try National Novel Writing Month. 50,000 words in 30 days. It’s insane. So insane that I’ve written six books since, (three for NaNoWriMo) and sold one of them, with a right of first refusal for a second. I’m converted. I spend some time getting to know my characters and the direction I think the plot is going. Then I turn them loose in my imagination and write that discovery draft. Only then do I go back and edit. I keep a wipe off board next to the computer where I make notes of things not working or plot twists requiring additional foreshadowing in earlier chapters. Revisions and edits are so much easier now. And I actually get to type THE END in a reasonable amount of time.
(I WILL train myself to get to the end of previously unfinished MSS so I can get them finished!)
by Silver James January 13th, 2009 at 8:18 amVery insightful. and you still have a lovely, full head of hair. Impressive.
by Cele January 13th, 2009 at 8:33 amHair, yes. Nails, definitely. My marriage could use a little work after that month of discovery drafting, however!
by Roxanne St. Claire January 13th, 2009 at 8:34 amGreat testimonial, sister! And I *like* the wipe off board next to the computer. Good suggestion.
by Roxanne St. Claire January 13th, 2009 at 8:33 amNote: this comment was supposed to go under Silver James’ note…I’m still learning the whole nested reply thing, which I love but sometimes forget. R
by Roxanne St. Claire January 13th, 2009 at 9:22 amMine’s two-sided – half wipe-off, half cork board. Wipe-off is for immediate attention (and sticky notes stick well, too) while the cork board is for long term ideas (and future plots, characters, titles and odd bits of inspiration). Now if I could just get my editor and my muse on the same schedule…*nods* The WIP keeps getting interrupted by those pesky pre-publication edits and revisions on the sold MS. ;-P
by Silver James January 13th, 2009 at 10:44 amI’m stealing the two sided half-wipe – love it. Thanks, Silver.
by Roxanne St. Claire January 13th, 2009 at 11:26 amI try desperately to cut loose and just the write the first draft. It’s an internal battle, since I want to stop on every page and edit, rewrite, and let myself get bogged down in detail. I’ve done nano, and it is enlighting. I encourage every writer to try it at least once.
by Lee January 13th, 2009 at 8:38 amWrite the book first and edit it later is how I work.
by Lara Santiago January 13th, 2009 at 9:12 amWelcome to the “discovery draft” way of life, Rocki.
Because typing “the end” as soon as possible is so very satisfying and anything can be revised once you finish.
I’m so glad you love this new process.
L
Since you type “the end” A LOT, this means a great deal coming from you. Thanks for the support!
by Roxanne St. Claire January 13th, 2009 at 11:27 amI did the discovery draft on this third book and it was both a better book and an easier book to write. I quit second-guessing everything and just got it down on paper, fast, like I was telling someone the story. Then I went back and polished it and my editor loved it. Oh, she saw the middle of the discovery draft–scared the pants off her, I think because it was so different than how I’d worked before. Then she saw the final version and was all “yeah, let’s do it like this next time.” LOL.
by Toni McGee Causey January 13th, 2009 at 10:12 amI am DYING to do this. I don’t know how to let go and do it. I know that sound dumb, but I fear than unless someone ties me in a chair and glues my fingers to the keys and won’t let me have booze until I’ve written THE END, it’ll never happen.
But I’m thrilled for you. Can’t wait to read the final results.
by ArkansasCyndi January 13th, 2009 at 11:07 amCyndi, I totally understand not being able to let go and try it because I COULD NOT until circumstances forced me. That’s why I converted and wrote this blog. When you do it, I’ll give you booze. (Probably I’ll give you booze anyway.)
by Roxanne St. Claire January 13th, 2009 at 11:28 amWelcome to my church! I’ve been puking up rough drafts since, well, since forever! I always write through, refusing to look back but making lot’s of notes along the way. I can’t edit as I go. It slows me down.
by Karin Tabke January 13th, 2009 at 11:45 amYay! Rocki, you are a convert!! This is the way I have always, always written. For a short time in my “critique group” phase I tried it the revise as you go way–hated, hated, hated it! Polished my voice right out of the darn thing. Like you, if something’s really off, I go back and rework but that’s it! And I don’t do that often. You know so much more about the characters when you get to the end. This is great! I’m thrilled for you.
by Debra Webb January 13th, 2009 at 1:04 pmLOL, Karin, you are too funny, puking up rough drafts. It is liberating, I’ll give you that.
And Deb, no wonder you write so many wonderful books a year. I really do think the discovery draft increase productivity and decreases stress.
by Roxanne St. Claire January 13th, 2009 at 1:07 pmHeck yeah, my process hurts! I wanna repent my painful ways, but alas, I always backslid into revision hell.
But I’m seeing the light! I will repent, shunning revisions and rewrites for the glory of a fast discovery draft!
by Jen Lyon January 13th, 2009 at 3:45 pmRocki,
Thank you. This was such a timely post for me. I’d been sailing along, then hit a rough patch that stopped me in my tracks. I’m going to try to just vomit my way through the rest of it…and clean up the mess after. That’s the fun part for me too…especially when I stumble across a note I left myself like ‘ick, or fix’ and see that its not quite as bad as I’d thought.
~Pam
by pam claughton January 14th, 2009 at 8:05 amGo ahead, Pam. Vomit – you’ll feel better.
Srsly, give it a go. I’m so glad I did. R
by Roxanne St. Claire January 14th, 2009 at 5:39 pmOH, Rocki, I edit as I go and both love and hate it. It’s NOT my natural writing style. I wrote the first five published books with one very rough draft, then go back and edit/layer/revise. I LOVE revisions just like you! But when I was on a crunch deadline for FEAR NO EVIL, I had to write fast and produce a clean manuscript. So I started editing as I go. It worked for that book. But it doesn’t work for all of them. It has NOT worked for FATAL SECRETS and it’s been killing me.
My next book I’m going to try the fast, get the book down on paper “sloppy copy” or “discovery draft” and then go back and revise. I hope. I think. I only have 6 weeks to write it.
by Allison Brennan January 15th, 2009 at 7:10 amYou know, I believe some books (and some plot arcs) are somehow more conducive to this style than others. And where your head (and deadline!) is can also affect your ability to do the discovery draft. Good luck with it!
LOL on Sloppy Copy. I think its Anne LaMott who called it a Shitty First Draft. I am going to pick up my copy of BIRD BY BIRD and read that chapter again.
by Roxanne St. Claire January 15th, 2009 at 7:14 am