I’ve learned a lot from editing my latest manuscript and I’m writing this post to not only share my experience, but to remind myself that when I’m bogged down, knee deep in a draft and seemingly heading nowhere, to remember one thing – keep writing.
War & Quel, the sequel to 2013’s Kings of the World, is somewhat of an epic story. It’s 90k words of sci-fi adventure, set across many locations and involving dozens of characters from various species. There are different philosophies, technologies and layers of political intrigue to interweave into the story. I also had to consider where the story had come from and where it was going beyond this book (the third instalment will pick up from where this leaves off).
So, when I was at the computer coalface, laying down the first draft, I had a lot to consider.
There were times in the first draft when the story just wasn’t gelling. That’s daunting enough on a first story, more so when you have set up an expectation to readers with a first, and you’re trying to create a quality series.
Then there’s my word count challenge, where I have set myself the task of writing 730 words a day for 730 days. Fortunately, when I hit rough times I had the Zombie RiZing series to fall back on. The words were just falling onto the page in these shorter stories. This was great for the word count, terrible for War & Quel. I was losing all writing momentum on this story. I’d do a little bit here and there between Zombie RiZing manuscripts, but the whole process was stagnating to the point it was becoming too daunting, too big to even look at.
Then I finished the sixth and final book in the first Zombie RiZing season. My crutch was gone. It was just me and the meandering half-finished manuscript… and the word count clock was ticking.
There were story threads unfinished, world-building elements yet to be considered, inconsistencies in sub-plot X, not enough time put into sub-plot Y, character motivations underdeveloped or unresolved, pacing issues and I still hadn’t written the final third of the first draft!
It’s the sort of position that can overwhelm you very quickly… or halt progress altogether. Every time I’d get to an element of the story that I knew already had issues, it would bog down my writing momentum as all the negative/unresolved aspects of the manuscript were the only things I could see or think about.
It was at that point I decided I was just going to do whatever it took to get the first draft to the finish line and work out the problems I knew the script had later.
When I hit a section that bogged me down, I would write what I could, dotting it with ‘xxxxxxx’ blanks where I would add further detail later, or continue a previous (but as yet undetermined) plot point forward, or add a new location description, or tie it to a previous conversation that would take me time to dig out. Sometimes whole passages would be xxxxxx (conversation between Character X and Y about xxxxx)
It really helped me power to the end of the first draft and it was only then that I realised you don’t know what you don’t know.
The story went in a slightly different direction than I had planned like, I guess, most stories do. Once all the characters were put through the set of circumstances and events I had created, they steered the ship to a knew, but more fitting, direction than I could have envisaged.
It was only then, when I finished the first skeleton draft, that I could see the big picture of what War & Quel was. And it was only then all of the unresolved elements, that had been festering away in the background (the things I didn’t know) could be dealt with. I had a start, middle and end, I had a structure, I had progression – I had the true framework of the story.
I knew.
I filled in all the blanks as a wiser storyteller and, in a second draft, was able to tighten up all the key elements, so the pacing felt natural, the world-building felt believable with depth and the characters’ conflict, actions and motivations all played out in the greater framework of the story.
There was absolutely no chance of me nailing all this with the first draft, when I didn’t know what I didn’t know.
So, next time the road ahead in a manuscript seems to tower over me like the north face of the Eiger, I’m just going to have one finger hovering over the X key on standby, then power my way to the finish line, knowing it will all come together with the greater understanding of knowing my story better, when I really know what it is.
