Andrew Jones’ Blog

Having ‘finished’ my first novel using the NaNoWriMo method described in No Plot? No Problem!: A Low-Stress, High-Velocity Guide to Writing a Novel in 30 Days I then had problems when I came to the editing stage (using the NaNoEdMo - National Novel Editing Month process)

For this reason I decided to try using an alternate approach, as detailed in First Draft in 30 Days by Karen Wiesner. This is a much more technical way of writing a novel - building up detail stage by stage until you have everything you need, in the correct sequence and with all the discrepancies ironed out before you start writing your manuscript.

I started reading the book on the 8th of May and began filling in worksheets three days later, but since then it’s been slow progress!

It’s been slow partly because I’m reading the book as I go along, and I’m having difficulty motivating myself  (I may have mentioned that I’m kind of lazy) - but also because Karen Wiesen seems to assume that you’ve already thought a lot about your story, know who the main characters are and what the overall plot is in some detail, and probably have quite a few freehand notes already. She says that she has many stories on the back boiler, slowly building detail until she decides to actually start writing them - she makes notes and files them over a period of years. Whereas my new novel is an idea I did have a couple of years ago, but it hadn’t got beyond a couple of scenes and characters. The reason I chose this plot was because it had similarities to my first novel, so it would be easier to compare the processes between the two methods and then decide which I preferred.

So I have now made nearly all my rough notes and done some of the research, so the next step is to start on the formatted plot outline, filling in details from the previous worksheets to produce a (hopefully!) coherent plot outline from which the writing can begin! I’ve taken about 45 days to do 15 days of Karen’s method - so at this rate it may not get finished until the end of July!

Cheers for now,

Andy