Writing Down The Bones

Author Natalie Goldberg offers up some amazing advice in her tried and true book, "Writing Down The Bones: Freeing The Writer Within": Keep your hand moving, lose control, and don't think. It's great advice, if you can fight the urge to resist it, because it takes so much pressure off the creation process in the early stages of writing your novel.

If you liken your work in progress to a body, the core structure is the skeleton, or the bones. Everything is built upon that foundation. You add the muscles, the nerves, the flesh, etc. until you have an entire being. Therefore, if you work on first creating that skeleton and not worrying about anything beyond that, you will free yourself to create the basic template of your story. Admittedly, it's hard for me to write and not want to edit as I go. I want to feel that when I finish that first draft, that it will be all downhill from there. But truthfully, that's where the hard work begins.

Don't worry about the details. Write your story, even if it includes long rambling passages of description and dialogue. You will go back and change it later, but in the meantime, you are getting the words on the page. Don't let others read your novel at this stage, even though you may want direction and feedback, because it may veer you off course. You know you're going to make changes, you know it needs work, so it can be equally frustrating for a beta reader to give you feedback knowing that it's all likely to be changed up anyhow. This is the part where you write for YOU - no rules, just free-form writing,

When you have finished draft one of your ultimate epic masterpiece, read it out loud. Make notes in the margins. Does it need more action? Is there enough suspense? Are the characters three-dimensional? Is there a discernible plot? How is the pacing? Author Jessica Brody had a great suggestion - she uses color-coded note cards to write the information about what each character is doing throughout the story. After all, each character has their own arc and purpose. Are there way too many note cards of the same color? Does your story need more balance? Try and break the story down to its natural chapter breaks, making sure each one ends in a place that keeps the reader hungry to find out what happens in the next chapter. Once you have completed this first pass, you will have added your muscles. Stir and repeat and you'll have your nerves. NOW would be a great time to give it to some writer beta friends to see what they think.

Once you get legitimate feedback about what's working and what's not, you can know where to focus your revisions from there. When you have finished (if a novel can ever be truly finished) you will have the whole body, with all it's parts working in concert with each other.

Be careful not to rush any part of this process. It takes work, patience and perseverance. When you send your novel out, you want it to be the absolute best it can be. Further, as you've probably learned by now, the world of publishing takes a loooong time. I've read it articulated many places to remember it's not a race. If you attract interest from an agent but they want some changes, don't feel pressured to pull a week of all-nighters to turn it around to them. They want to see you put in the time to make it right too, and there are few things in life that come out perfect if we rush them. It just ups the ante for oversights and mistakes.

HOW BETA READING MAKES YOU A BETTER WRITER

We all tend to fall in love with our words when we write. C'mon, admit it. You've done it too - refused to cut that one line because it was just so snarky and clever, or waxed poetic about the character's surroundings even though they in no way truly furthered the story by the end but . . . but . . . it was so perfectly written!!! In short, editing is like butchering babies, and although butchering babies is never an easy task, it's even harder when it's your own. When we are so close to our work, the best thing we can do to see what's REALLY working (and what's totally not), along with catching all those pesky punctuation errors we've flown by a million times and the repetition of words and phrases, is to have a few trusty beta readers.

Beta readers are other fellow writers (your Mom and best friend and the 10th grader down the street who loves all things paranormal don't count) who can read your work for you and objectively give you such feedback. But where to find them? By networking. Go to local writing events and conferences and get to know fellow writers in your area. If you are a member of SCBWI, there is usually a regional coordinator who can hook you into other writers looking for beta readers and critique partners. You can also go online to various writing websites and often there will be forums for people looking for other writers to do just this.

Granted, it seems hard to build that trust with another writer you don't really know. Will they know what they're talking about? Does it matter if they are published or unpublished? How often do we need to send material back and forth? The best thing to do is to exchange the first ten pages of what you're working on. Just like agents who want to read those critical first ten pages, it will give you a feel for the writer's style. If it seems like quality writing, and something you could connect with, fantastic! Hopefully, the feeling is mutual! Published or unpublished is truly no matter. Writers that today are unpublished may one day be published, and writers that are now published were once in the trenches waiting for their big break. Both are fully capable of providing different levels of insight based on their knowledge of writing and their place on the journey.

When I read other writers' work-in-progress, it is a fantastic opportunity for me to really break apart the mechanics of the story and see what works, what doesn't and why. In turn, I can apply that to similar sections of my own writing. I pay special attention to dialogue transitions, because I tend to write dialogue-heavy stories. Dialogue, while engaging, is boring if every other sentence just ends in "she said" or "he told me." I learn to eliminate that sometimes entirely to put in a small descriptive action that helps keep the action moving on the page. I am also able to discern much easier in someone else's work when there are huge passages where nothing is happening. Again, when we are in love with our words, it's much harder to do that with our own work. I learn about style and voice, description and how to convey action and emotion effectively. The insight and detailed feedback my critique partners and beta readers have offered me has been absolutely invaluable.

Just as our stories are never truly "done," we are also never "done" learning from others. The writing community is incredibly supportive in that way. It is such a welcoming group, eager to pay-it-forward. So if you're not connecting with other writers to help make your work stronger, start now!