You’ve finished your first draft. Congratulations!

Step One – Put It On Ice

The first thing you should do now is put your novel away for a while. At least a week, but the longer the better, so a month or two is nice. Why? Because the next step is to revise your novel and you need some distance from it.

Right after you’ve finished your novel, you are deep into your story. You know your characters, your plot events… The story and the characters are perfect in your mind.

But in reality, your novel could use some work. Nobody writes a perfect first draft. Experienced writers or people with a huge amount of raw talent may be able to write a cohesive, exciting story with fully-developed characters, building tension and just the right amount of pacing to keep the reader turning the pages in their first draft of the story. But it isn’t perfect and yours won’t be either.

So put your novel away for a while. Let it take a good long nap.

Step Two – Celebrate

It’s time to party! No matter what shape your story is in, when you have reached the end of it, you should take the time to acknowledge your accomplishment. Lots of people SAY they want to write a book. Very few actually manage to get it done. So Yay for you!

A few suggestions for how to celebrate:

• Have dinner at your favorite restaurant.
• If you have a day job, take a vacation day just for yourself.
• Treat yourself to a new book or journal.
• Download some new songs for your MP3 player to inspire your writing.
• Get a massage, a manicure, a pedicure or some other pampering ritual.
• Post about it on your blog.
• Get together with your friends or writing group.
• Create a scrapbook page or collage to mark the day.

Whatever you do, do something special and memorable for you.

After you’re done celebrating and the story is done resting, it’s time to get back to work and start the revision. We’ll cover some different methods you can use to revise your novel in the next post.

You have your characters, you have some plot events, either written down or loosely in your mind. It’s time to start writing your novel.

But I can hear you asking, what about dialogue and pacing, theme, point of view? Those are important, yes, but not right now.

I use my first draft as an opportunity to explore my story world and characters. To understand them, to see if any new ideas for conflict or story events arise. I don’t worry about matters of craft, like dialogue, pacing, theme, point of view, etc. If I tried to keep all of those in mind while writing the first draft, I’d be paralyzed and no words would come out.

No, if you’re a beginning writer, use your first draft to get the story down on paper, nothing more. You can work on the craft stuff while you’re editing your novel. Eventually, when you’ve written enough words in your writing career, you’ll naturally include good dialogue, proper pacing, and most effective point of view in your first drafts.

First Draft Tips

• Write every day. You want to develop a consistent habit.
• Write in small chunks of time, like 10-20 minutes. If you’re pressed for time, keep your story materials handy and write in five minute bursts. The key to making short bursts work is to write as fast as you can in your session.
• No editing! Don’t go back to change anything. If you have a new idea that changes something you’ve already written, make a note somewhere (like your novel journal) and fix it later. You don’t want to lose your forward momentum.
• Don’t worry about clunky writing or dull words. You aren’t trying to write the perfect story, this first time around. You’re exploring the story world and characters and getting the basic story down on paper.

Looking for a program that will provide some encouragement for regular, fast writing? Try the Need for Speed mini course.

We’ve determined that the plot of your novel is the series of events that occur and lead your main character to the conclusion.

There are lots of resources to help you with your plotting. Let’s start with one of the most common – the various lists of basic plots like these.

One of the best things I’ve learned as a writer is that all of these lists are not plots. (Thank you, Holly Lisle!) They’re conflicts or dramatic situations. Take man vs. nature. Man vs. nature is a type of conflict. It certainly isn’t a series of events which we’ve determined makes a plot.

You can use these conflicts in your story as starting ideas for specific scenes and events however, so they are useful.

But for specific plotting help, it’s nice to have some guidelines.

Plotting Resources

Learn How To Create A Professional Plot Outline -This is the mini-course from Holly where she explains how to use the lists of conflicts to create plot events.

Holly also has an ebook out, Create a Plot Clinic, that gives you a bunch of tools to use for plotting. You can get the first few chapters for free here.

Novel Outlining 101 by Lynn Viehl

Outline Your Novel in 30 Minutes by Alicia Rasley

How to Plot Your Novel by Simon Haynes

Plotting Your Novel by Stella Cameron

The Three Act Structure by Stephen J. Cannell – this is a screenwriting method that many writers adapt for use on novels

Try one of these methods for plotting or several. What works for you on one novel might not work on the next, so don’t be afraid to try different techniques as needed.

Do you have any plotting methods that have worked really well for you?

You’ve got a character or two, you might have an idea for your setting, or a really great event to start your story with. Next, you need a plot.

Plot is the series of events in your novel that lead to the ending.

My favorite definition for plot is that it is “what happens to people”. A story about a person sitting alone, doing nothing, thinking nothing isn’t much of a story. Something needs to happen to that person, either physically, mentally, or emotionally. There has to be a change of some kind, otherwise your story is static.

In general, you can consider plot to be the series of events that happen throughout your book that your character either causes or must respond to. The events can be mental or cerebral like many literary books. Or they can be world-ending disasters and violent upheavals like in a thriller, scifi or fantasy novel. They can be emotional as two people work toward a lasting relationship, as in a romance novel. Or they can be a mixture of all of these.

The common thread is that things are happening and changing.

So, for your story, you need events. There are two schools of thought about plotting in the writing community – the plotters vs. the pantsers.

The first group, the plotters, believe in planning out the story events before writing the first draft. The second group, the pantsers, believe in just setting down and writing whatever comes to mind.

There are pros and cons to each method and neither one of them is the definitive correct method you should use. You should use the one that works for you. The only real difference between them is whether the plotting is done before you start writing or if you do it while you are writing.

For some guidelines on trying each method, check out Plotters vs. Pantsers – Which is Better?

You’ve got some characters and now you need some events. My next post will give you some different plotting resources that you can use to come up with those events.

Another way to begin a novel is with an idea for a setting. This is probably a method that is not widely used by writers (hmm… good idea for a survey), but it can work just as well as the other methods (Get a Character, Imagine an Idea).

Settings that Inspire

The trick here is to locate a setting that inspires you with a story idea. Depending on the genre you write there are many different options for finding an interesting setting. This is one area where the Internet can come in really handy.

Science Fiction/Fantasy Art

Jesse van Dijk has some amazing artwork on his site.

Other 3D Lands has artwork to browse and three collections set up as 2009 calendars for ongoing inspiration throughout the year.

Science Fiction and Fantasy Art – you may have to search a little here to find just landscape type pictures, but there is a LOT to choose from.

Landscape Art

For less exotic landscapes, try Art by Wagner for galleries divided by landscape type (gardens, deserts, mountains, paths, etc.).

Linda Vu has some gorgeous beach and ocean-front paintings.

Beautiful pictures of New Zealand landscapes.

Some interesting cityscape photos.

Tips for Using a Setting in Your Story

The same guideline applies here as it did to using an idea as the basis for your story – you have to include the human element. A terrific setting all by itself is going to be pretty static. Insert a character into the setting to bring it to life.

Determine the character’s relationship to the setting. Does he love it? Hate it? Is he in constant conflict with it? (Farmer battling dry ground to wrest a crop from it. Woman struggling to climb a mountain to reach something on the other side.)

Is the setting open or closed? Can the character leave the setting when he chooses? What are the consequences of leaving? (Imagine a life raft on the ocean. The character can choose to leave, i.e. jump overboard, but there will be consequences, i.e. possible drowning or maybe shark attack.)

Your Turn

Have you ever started a story idea with a setting? How did it work for you?

There are other ways to start a novel than with a character. Sometimes you get a great idea for an event or a situation for a novel, but with no idea who the characters will be.

For example, I once had a story idea about a personal computer falling in love with its user. By itself, it’s just an idea. You need to add details to it to make it into a story. Who was the user? Why was he/she worthy of being loved? How did the computer gain consciousness and develop feelings? Ideas by themselves are plentiful and nearly worthless. Ideas that have been developed with concrete details are priceless.

What If?

A good way to come up with story ideas from situations is to use “What If” thinking.

• What if an ignored girl became invisible one day after years of not being seen by others?
• What if there was an overcrowded world where the entire adult population committed mass suicide, leaving the world and its resources to their children? (I actually wrote this one.)
• What if there was a supercomputer that controlled a country’s defenses and it refused to act when war broke out? What if it forced the people to prove they were worthy of being protected?

How to Use an Idea Effectively

The trick to using an idea/situation as the basis of a story is to add the human element to it. Who is most affected by this situation? Who stands to gain from it? Who will lose because of it? You tailor your situation to a set of particular characters and suddenly, you have a story.

In the case of the second example above (the overcrowded world), I wrote the story from the perspective of the eldest child of a family on that world on the night before the adults implemented their plan to save their world and provide for their children’s future.

The son wanted to leave the planet because there was no future for him, no opportunity for him to find meaningful work due to the overcrowding and diminishing resources. His parents refused to let him leave because in their culture, home was everything. That night they committed suicide with all of the other adults and in the morning, the son found a new world with renewed resources and much work to be done. In his grief and shock, he finally understood his parent’s insistence on the value of home and took on the responsibility of staying.

The human element to the idea is in the details – a specific boy who is affected by the adults’ plan, a particular culture that values home so highly that the adults are willing to take drastic action to provide for their children’s future.

Benefit of Using an Idea to Start a Story

The benefit to starting with an idea is that you practically have your “elevator pitch” already done. Your “elevator pitch” is a sentence or two describing your story, short enough that you could recite it within 10-15 seconds (the time a short elevator ride might take). Your What If statement can serve as your elevator pitch, though it may need some tweaking to add in some of those specific details.

Moral of the Story (or Idea)

You can start a story with an idea rather than a character. Just make sure that you round out that idea by identifying specific characters who will be affected by it.

I’ve had it! I’ve had enough of this crap and it ends here. I refuse to deal with this any longer and changes are going to happen. Big changes. Massive changes, because this is totally unacceptable!

I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANYMORE!!

Does your main character feel this strongly about anything in your story? If he or she doesn’t, you’ve got a problem. You main character should be passionately outraged about something. Fiercely irate. Livid and ready to do whatever it takes to make things right.

If your main character can ignore the situation and just walk away with no consequences… you’ve got work to do. Give your character something to fight for, something that she must set right… or die in the trying.

Celebrate “I’m Not Going to Take It Anymore Day” (yes, that’s today) and give your character something to be furious about.

Writing a novel is a noble undertaking. And a lot of work. A lot more than most people realize. But if it is your dream and desire to write a novel, then good for you! We’re going to cover the basics of writing a novel to help you out.

Big caveat to keep in mind: While there are some generally accepted standards for novels (romance novels are about a romantic relationship between two people, novels have a beginning, middle and end, etc.), there really are no rules for a novel. Every writing “rule” has been broken by some writer somewhere.

It’s good to learn the rules, so you can break them on purpose (to achieve a particular effect with your novel, perhaps). Breaking rules because you don’t even know that the “rules” exist isn’t going to get you very far as a writer.

So, rather than rules, we’ll talk about guidelines. The first guideline is to get a Character.

A Great Character

A novel usually has at least one character, though that character doesn’t have to be human (look at all the children’s books with animals as the main character) or even alive (vampire fiction, anyone?) A character gives your reader someone to cheer for or root against, and you want your reader to be involved in your story.

A Cast of One or Thousands

You can have one character or a few thousand. Though a thousand would be a lot to keep track of and all those people might confuse your reader. (Was that Mary With the Bad 80′s Perm who wanted to marry Jimmy the Grocer’s Delivery Boy or was it Mary With the Desperately Sad Attraction to Polyester Clothing? Neither, it was Carrie the Bungee-Jumping Goth who had the crush on Timmy the Geek With the Velvet-Lined Pocket Protector.)

Good, Bad or Really Bad

Your character can be sympathetic (a hero), a necessary evil (an anti-hero), or the worst villain to ever live. What you want is a character that your reader cares about. It doesn’t matter if the reader wants to see your character roast in a dark pit of burning napalm (which could be the villain or the hero, if your reader is a bit twisted). Wanting the character to roast means that your reader “cares” and that’s what you want. If your reader doesn’t care, they’ll set your book down quickly and move on to something that does engage their emotions.

So, the first ingredient for your novel… a character that your reader can really love or really hate.

I was planning to start a new series for beginning writers today, walking them through the steps to start a novel. But this idea keeps nagging at me and it has finally shoved itself to the front of the blog post line like a rude person cutting in line at the movie theater. Beginning Writer Series grudgingly gives way to Pushy Post Idea to avoid a fistfight at the blog.

January’s the time of year when we make resolutions… and promptly forget about them within a week. I’ve done my part in this grand old tradition for many years, obediently forgetting mine within the designated time period.

This year I’m not setting resolutions in the usual way. Instead, I’m drawing inspiration from two sources – Ali Edwards and Chris Brogan.

One Word

Ali is using a one-word resolution.

Can you identify a single word that sums up what you want for yourself in 2009?

It can be something tangible or intangible. It could be a thought or a feeling or an emotion. It can be singular or plural. The key is to find something that has personal meaning for you. This is not your mother’s word or your spouse’s word or your child’s word – this is YOUR word.

One little word can have big meaning in your life if you allow yourself to be open to the possibilities. And here’s one thing that is totally interesting: sometimes a word will pop into your brain and it will not make any sense to you right now. Give it some time. Let it percolate a bit. I have often found that our hearts speak to us in very unique ways. Maybe this is a word you need to hear but just aren’t ready for it yet. Again, be open to the possibilities.

She has a HUGE list of words from her blog readers. It might spark some ideas for you.

Three Words

Chris is making a three-word resolution.

…think of how you want to be successful in 2009. Then, try to think in even broader terms. Extrapolate on the broader terms, and find one word to hang the idea on.

Meaning, don’t think as much “I want to lose 50 pounds and get back into my high school pants.” Try thinking “Fitness means I’ll be able to cover more ground.” From there, you can say “ground” might be your word. And then, when you look at that as a word, you see how it can open you up to even more meanings. “Ground” can remind you to get fit so you can cover more ground. It can mean to be “grounded,” like someone who feels calm and at rest.

Look for three words that will help you frame your challenges and opportunities for 2009.

I find myself falling in between one and three. My two words this year are Persistence and Focus.

Persistence means that I will keep on working on this website (always improving and adding more value for you) and making progress on my internet marketing plans. Persistence means I will make consistent efforts on the housework. Persistence means that I will make regular, measured progress on my science fiction novel until I have a completed, revised final manuscript.

Focus means that I won’t get distracted by all the new and shiny things on the Internet. Focus means that I will evaluate new ideas against my overall goals to see if they fit in or should be discarded. Focus means ignoring the irrelevant drama in the world around me, so that I can give more attention to the things that matter most to me.

I like the idea of having a mantra of one to three words to focus on throughout the year. If you’ve had trouble keeping your resolutions in the past, try choosing one or three words to reflect on in 2009.

And if you’d like to share them in the comments, even better.