When Draft One is Only The Job Interview for your Characters

Now that I've passed the 60% mark for Draft Two of Redemption, I'm starting to realise how completely different the story is from Draft One - whilst at the same time essentially the same. Confused? I don't blame you. I shall explain...

The original key plot points are still there, unchanged in their purpose or meaning within the story as a whole. The settings and locales are still the same. And I haven't added or removed any characters or changed their names, ages or occupations. And yet, when I compare my first draft rantings to my second, they read so differently in style and context as to almost seem as if both were written by completely different writers. So far I like the second writer's version much more, I have to say (just as well, or may have to either give up writing or find a way to travel backwards through time to do the stages in the opposite order.) But what's changed, exactly? What is it about my revised version that was missing from that first draft? I've felt a need to figure this out from the moment I noticed it, if only so that I can apply the lessons learned to future novels. And this week, on completing a very particular chapter, it finally dawned on me.

It's the characters. I've finally got to know them as people, rather than just walking, talking plot devices.

If you've been writing stories of any kind for any amount of time, you will have doubtless heard the advice about creating detailed profiles for your characters. The advocates of this approach proclaim you must know everything about every important character in your story; not just the basics like their name, age and physical attributes, but even the most minute stuff. Like where they went to school, their shoe size, their most embarrassing memory, whether they'd be Team Jennifer or Team Angelina...

I did that thing. Well, most of it anyway. If I'm honest, I didn't bother with many of the trivialities. My protagonist has lived a pretty hellish life even before she got to her current place in the story, so is it really going to help me to know what her favourite tv programme would be - if she ever got the chance to even see a working tv, never mind watch it?

The thing is though, I did all of that malarkey after I'd worked out the basic plot, filling in the information as I came to it while writing the first draft. There's a popular school of thought that says you shouldn't even begin to write the words 'Chapter One' until you have these complete biographies of every significant character in the story, all written up like handy mini-Bibles for you to refer to with each twist and turn of your plot. I'm sure that works like a charm for some writers, but it doesn't really match the way I dream up stories. I usually start with a 'What if..?' and chase the premise to its ultimate conclusion via a series of even more 'what if..?'s piled on top. Part of that process involves asking questions like "What kind of person could find themselves in that situation in the first place?" "What sort of things would they do to get out of that situation?" and "How could their solutions to those problems make the resulting situation even worse?" (Bwah ha haaaaa..!)

Those are things you can't really figure out until you've actually put your little LEGO-men onto your Head-Stage and watched them improv their little plastic socks off. So, if you ultimately discover you need a Benedict Cumberbatch to drive your plot forward, you're going to be pretty gutted if you've only got a pre-made Bruce Willis available in your character-bank.

So, while I had a basic idea of what sort of characters I might need to populate Redemption as I began to write it, I didn't really get to know them as individuals until I'd spent some time with them, watching them on my Head-Stage and making notes about their performances. Hence the job interview analogy in the title of this post (see, it wasn't just a random thing..!)

The benefits of this approach are that you have a much better chance of putting the right person into the right job, and that, should there be some areas where they're not quite compatible with certain duties, you can make alternative plans rather than writing yourself into a black hole (i.e. delegate tasks to another, more suitable candidate, or allow them their awkward little foibles but then hit them from another angle with something more 'suited' to their personality... *strokes imaginary white cat and cackles*)

The downside, of course, is that your characters will be... well, little more than LEGO people for most of your first draft, as you watch them get to grips with your script and attempt to deliver the performance of their career. By the time I was ready to do my first read-through of Draft One, I'd spent enough time with them to know what they were really like, and was able to get completely frustrated when they weren't performing their roles to their full potential thanks to the lousy script some knuckle-headed chump had given them. ("Why does my protagonist cry so bloody much - at just about everything? Whoa, Mr Doctor-Character, do you not think that's waaaay inappropriate behaviour? And as for you, Mr Supporting Character - no sweetheart, you are not a stand-up comedian...") Take some familiar-ish stereotypes and give them a few double-espressos with Red Bull chasers, and that was pretty much the Draft One population of Redemption.

For the second draft I had all the pieces of the plot already in place, which meant I could let them marinate while I focused more deeply on the characters playing them out - and the biggest shift was in viewpoint and motivation. In the first draft my approach had been pretty rudimentary; the protagonist would do or say something and the other character would do or say something in response that fitted in with both the plot and what I'd discovered about their personality so far. This character was tactless and socially inept? Boom, he'd do/say something tactless and socially inept then. Job done!

But by the time I got to starting the second draft, I'd learned something about characters - all characters, not just the ones in my novel. That, no matter who they are as far as the structure of the story works, in their eyes they are the protagonist - the only life they're living is theirs, and they're the star of that, baby! So now, for every interaction between my protagonist and other characters, I had to consider the feelings of two or more people, not just one. To think beyond "What is this typically socially awkward and blunt character going to say and do in this particular situation with my protagonist?" and instead think "how is that character likely to feel about this situation? Would he misinterpret the words/actions of my protagonist? And if he did, would he still respond the same way - or would he be defensive or fearful instead?" Sometimes this took my plot in new directions that I hadn't even anticipated - but even when that happened, the new twists still worked within the plot structure I had. If anything, they even explained parts that previously didn't have as much depth as I wanted.

As a result, some characters who started out as mere extras in my story have found themselves with bigger, more defined roles in this second draft. One character in particular has evolved in ways I could never have foreseen. In my first draft he was little more than occasional light relief, a bit of comedy filler to make the major characters look good. But once I started to see the way his mind worked and the reasons he became the person he'd become, I realised how much potential influence he could have on many existing plot points. He went from being a walk-on stooge to an unlikely but helpful ally for the protagonist and her friends, and became a much more interesting character as a result.

I still have a way to go, of course. Even once draft two is finished, there'll be further edits and polishes before I dip my toes into the cold cold waters of beta-reading... and then probably further editing and polishing. But it's an exciting journey, getting under the skin of my characters and letting them riff with the existing script to see what develops.

So, all you fellow writers out there... do you have a character from one of your stories who surprised you with their capabilities once you got to know them? One you grew to love (or hate) once you saw their true potential? Feel free to share them in the comments - I'd love to meet them.

What Keeps Writers Writing?

It's a question I've been pondering a lot this week, and for many reasons.

It was my son's first week back at school for starters, which meant that my Monday-to-Friday two-hour writing slot would no longer be dominated by yells, shouts and fragments of  random pop songs (their lyrics mangled into unintentionally hilarious surreality in the way only an eight-year-old can. I still haven't quite recovered from Lordes 'Royals' new-and-'improved' line "we don't care, we're drying anoraks in our dreams...")

So, back to nice, calm, focused writing sessions again - yee-hah! Where the only sound is my Redemption-themed writing soundtrack and the tippy-tapping of my industrious fingers rattling at a hundred miles an hour across the keyboard... erm - well, okay then, the first one of those two is a reality. The second one? Not so much. Word. Count. Has. Plummeted. Nope, I'm not even going to write it here, it's that bad.

Maybe it's just because the first week back at school for the new term involves more planning and sorting and adjusting than I've anticipated, and it'll all slot back into place again next week. That's what I'm telling myself anyway - and with only the smallest hint of panic in my voice as I do so... Or maybe it's because I haven't quite come out of that sludgy, quagmire-y part of the novel-writing process yet; that part where you become convinced that everything you're writing is crap, the whole premise of your novel is probably crap and it's probably been done by somebody else somewhere before and even if it hasn't no-one's ever gonna wanna read your crappy novel anyway...

And because I'm still wading through that quagmire of self -doubt, I'm second-guessing everything I'm writing before I even write it and slowing myself down to a crawl in the process.

Thing is, a huge part of this draft two process has involved some major reorganization of the plot; moving events around, adding structure in that previously wasn't there but should have been, taking parts out that didn't need to be there even though they seemed like they did in draft one - not to mention big changes to allocated 'screen time' for various characters. It's rewriting in the most literal sense - as if draft one was actually draft zero and this current draft two is the 'real' draft one. (Which is what happens when you pants it rather than outline beforehand, I suppose - yes, all you Outlining Fans, consider my wrists well and truly slapped, I hear you now.)

And maybe that's what's causing the slowdown in my word count. I have outlined the novel now, because - having actually finished a first draft - I've figured out what I was really trying to say all along. So for each and every scene I know what has to occur and how the characters should react and respond - it's all there, in my notes. But because it's re-writing - changing a story I've already written - my brain thinks of it as editing. And perhaps editing is not what this is - or at least, not the mental mindset I should be adopting to do it. Perhaps I should be treating this as if it's my second Draft One instead. Get down the bones and worry about putting the meat on it in the next pass - and the next, and the one after that... it'll be done when it's done, as they say.

Except that's a bit of a depressing thought. It's already taken me two years to get to this stage - and now I'm taking myself a stage backwards again? Back to Draft One Mark II? At this rate I'll be a senior citizen before I get this novel finished!

But here's the thing... I have to finish this novel now. It was easy to abandon all my previous novel attempts, because I felt that I couldn't take them any further anyway at that particular time (which is why I left them languishing in Hard Drive Hades on my computer rather than deleting them completely.) But Redemption is the novel I have to finish writing, and with the aim of making it the very best I can make it. To use a computer gaming analogy, it's like the quest I have to complete before I can Level Up as a writer. And since there's no way I could ever allow myself to do anything but my very best work on it, if it takes me flippin' ages to get it finished.... well, I'm just going to have to suck it up and deal with it.

This is a commitment that feels a lot like a marriage - for better or worse, richer or poorer, 'til death do us part... Is this the way it is for veteran writers too? Is it something of a rite of passage for just your first novel, until you fall into a way of working that just makes writing novels feel like a natural process that ends with 'job done, now on to the next one?'

Is there one particular novel you've written that you feel defined you as a writer?

How My New Allotment is a Lot Like Draft One of My Novel

Yesterday I finally become the proud owner (well - 'leaser' anyway) of an allotment - a lovely patch of land about forty feet by twenty feet for the purpose of growing stuff to eat.

I'd been on a waiting list for a while, so when this came up I jumped at it. If I hadn't, my eight-year-old son would probably have jumped on my behalf, since he's been panting to have his own little patch to grow things ever since our next door neighbours got their allotment plot. Needless to say, he is beside himself with an excitement which hasn't been dulled in the slightest by the current state of our newly-acquired plot. Because... yeah. Ready-to-plant it aint. Not by a long shot.

Its previous owner was a man in his eighties, who gradually stopped tending to it because it just became too much for him. So when we took it over yesterday afternoon it hadn't seen any action for at least two years. As a result, any soil there is hidden under a thick carpet of knee-high grass, ivy and a particularly virulent form of thistle - not to mention long-discarded bags of fertiliser, bits of wood and wire netting and other assorted rubbish scattered all over the place. So yeah, something of an unholy mess that's gonna need a lot of clearing up, digging up and tearing out unwanted stuff before I can start putting in the things I want to grow and nurture.

And it struck me that my first draft of w-i-p The Renegades looked a lot like that too, when I first came back to it after a six-week 'fermentation period.'

In both cases I think I went through the same emotions. I started off  by staring at it and going "Whoa... that's a whole lotta work to do right there." I definitely doubted my stamina and determination to commit to the task. My track record in the past hadn't been that great, particularly with novels; I'd put in the hard work for a bit, but as my enthusiasm trailed off so did the hours I put into it, until it got to none at all. But that was with even getting a draft one finished, and this time I'd done that - I'd finally got to the stage where I had a completed draft to work on. I finally proved to myself that I can do it after all - I can commit when I feel something's worth the effort. The Renegades is worth the effort, even if it ultimately never gets published - I'll still have learned so much about how to write a novel from it, which I can use towards writing more and better ones in the future. And this allotment will be worth it too.

So yesterday, within minutes of acquiring my new plot of land, I decided to approach it the way I approached my other plot - the one I'm currently shaping into Draft Two of The Renegades.

Golden Rule Number One: start small. I can't fix everything right away, and trying to make the whole thing look better overall in just one pass is just too big a task and will ultimately leave me feeling like I've barely made a dent in terms of progress. So I set to work on clearing just a small section of the plot, a six-foot-square corner overgrown with thistles and trailing ivy. I ripped them all out, broke up the soil underneath and dug it over, so that I had a nice, bare patch of ground to plant things in. Okay, it might only be six foot square patch, but it's the best patch, and when I look at the whole plot overall it's very obvious that I've done something to improve it. Which makes me think "hmm, yeah, I can do this. A bit at a time, in regular little chunks, and I can do all of this."

I've reached the halfway point in draft two of The Renegades so far - and that too, was done in regular little chunks each day. Of course I'll still need to go back over them and tighten them further - but, like my little patch of earth, they already look miles better than the draft one sludge pond they emerged from. And that spurs me on to keep going, in regular little chunks at a time.

I'll be the first to admit I'm no gym bunny, so after yesterday's efforts in my allotment I was fully expecting to wake up this morning feeling like I'd fallen out of a first-floor window. But actually it's... not bad. The only place I ache is, somewhat weirdly, my hands, from tearing all those stubborn thistles up (a writer who's fingers are out of shape - how ironic is that?) And I probably felt the same way the morning after my first time at the coalface with draft two as well.

Each morning, before beginning my writing session, I've also been reading a metric tonne of books about novel writing and plotting and outlining and dialogue and show don't tell... Because if I'm gonna do this thing - and I am gonna do this thing - I'm darn well gonna do it armed with every tidbit of knowledge and advice I can get my hands on. So now I'm planning my library trips to get books about growing fruit and veg, not to mention trips to garden centres to ogle all those lovely seeds and gardener's charts and all the other fancy-pants things that now look like I desperately need them (I probably don't - a bit like I don't really need another notebook divided into six sections, or another set of highlighters that - oh look! Can be hung on a keyring this time..!)

And now I must leave you - I have an allotment to tend to. And my eight-year-old son has already planted it all out in his head and is nagging my ears off to make it a reality - by the end of today, if possible. Hmm... looks like not everyone can see the benefits of 'regular little chunks...'