I will caveat this post by saying there was no way on God’s green earth I was going to manage 50K in 24 hours. I went in with the slightly saner goal of 25K and even that was a stretch. I ended up with 14,158 words and a new perspective on writing. It’s the latter I’m going to talk about, for prosperity (lol).

I don’t need perfection

I’m a micro-editor. I will write a sentence or two and then twiddle with them. While this does result in a clean draft, said draft takes months. I’m not kidding. And I can lose momentum even on stories that I love to write – A Certain Darkness has stalled due to my need to have everything exactly right first time.

With the 24HN, I couldn’t do that and end up with a decent word count. I had to just write. The only thing I allowed myself was to correct typos. That was it.

I don’t need details

I have blank spaces where I wanted a good word and it wasn’t coming to me. Brackets and other placeholders galore. My FMC didn’t even get a surname until I declared the challenge done.

Getting out of my own way was so liberating. I’ve learned that I can get mired in the details and are they really necessary? No, Margaret, they are not.

I can write a whole story in 24 hours

It is the roughest draft I’ve ever written in my life, but the bones of an entire novel are in place. Bones that I can build on.

I used to believe that slow writing and picking at words was how I wrote. It took trying this challenge to push me out of that belief. It’s opened my eyes to what I can achieve, even with my neuro-spicy brain.

Moving forward

I’m relaxing today to give my brain a chance to cool off. Next step is to go through the story and note the action down into an outline, so I can see the rise and fall of the narrative. Developing the main characters, deepening the descriptions, and so on.

Which is all stuff I do as a rule, but usually during the rough draft. Doing it afterwards is a new and exciting thing.

Us writers are neurotic beans. My house is never cleaner than when I’m trying to write. It’s useful procrastination but it’s still procrastination. See, I don’t really plan my books. I get a general idea, a few scenes and a couple of characters, then charge into writing like the Men of the West against the forces of Mordor.

However, I have three things that shift me from complete pantser to a somewhat organised plantser.

Thing 1: The Back Page Blurb

This is the summary on the back page of a book that sells it to readers. It’s also what appears on Amazon etc for the same purpose. It’s usually three or four paragraphs that introduces the character(s) and the main plotline up to the halfway point (or thereabouts).

I find writing this either before I start working on the story or early on forces me to think about the plot in loose terms and gets those nebulous ideas down on paper. I usually leave it in the Word document, at the top, so I can look back at it easily. Like any pre-writing, it’s not set in stone and can be tweaked as the story takes shape. And the bonus is I have something to put into agent/publisher pitches.

Thing 2: One Page Synopsis

A synopsis is something most writers love to hate. How do you condense 80,000 words (or thereabouts) into a couple of pages?! However, I find a quick and dirty run-down of my story to be very handy, especially when it comes to the infamous Sticky Middle.

What I’m talking about isn’t the polished document you send off. I’m meaning the sort of story you used to write at school on the subject “what we did on our holiday.” Lots of and thens and suddenlys. Really rough plot points that are subject to change as you write.

That said, I’ve learned to tweak this synopsis as I write, so by the time I’ve finished a first draft I’ve a usable, if rough, synopsis for my submission packages. As long as it goes up to and includes the end, it’s good enough to send.

Thing 3: Brackets

If an idea is the White Rabbit, then research is the Rabbit Hole. So easy to fall into and get lost in. So, Alice, what do you do when you hit something in your draft that needs research?

Brackets, my loves.

I use curly ones () to note down things I need to look up on the first edit, often highlighted into the bargain, and square ones [] as placeholders for names. The bonus of square brackets is you’re not going to use them for anything else, so a search-and-replace isn’t going to eff up your prose.

[CharacterA], [CharacterB], [Planet1] and so on litter my rough drafts. Not for main characters, for who the name is part of their characterisation, but minor ones and insignificant details. Sometimes a name will come to me as I’m writing and I’ll do the search-and-replace in the rough draft. Most times, though, I brainstorm once the story’s done and make a list.

The added bonus of writing with brackets is you can see how many times you’ve used that placeholder and designate research/world building accordingly. By which I mean that a planet/place your characters end up at a lot needs far more detail than one they’re at once or twice. This will save you so much time, I swear to glob.

That’s it!

I hope you find these tricks helpful. Maybe let me know in the comments? puppy eyes