Wattpad Fantasy Writer's Advice

I Finished My Story! Now What?

I'll let you in on a dark, terrible secret....

Come a little closer. Yes, a little closer.

Oops, too close. Stick of gum?

Ahem, anyways. Here's the dark terrible secret that many writers don't know starting out:

Your first story is not a story.

I mean, okay okay, it is  technically a story. But more accurately, it's a draft. And not only is it a draft, it's a ROUGH draft. It's the very beginning of the long arduous process that writers go through to polish their stories until they become books.

Can I let you in on another dirty secret?

All the stuff I have here on Wattpad, every last story, is a rough draft.

Why? Because many of them I write as I go. On many of them I get input from readers and the story ends up growing and changing and going in different directions and the characters get confused or rebellious and do stuff they aren't supposed to do and then as a writer you just kind of have to give them the stink eye and keep going like, "Oh, um...I totally meant to do that."

Also, most of my stories here on Wattpad don't go on to be published books, with the exception of FROST, of course.

Which brings me to the process of polishing, and second and third and fourth drafts. And what I'm going through right now. I'm JUST finished the first draft of the second book in the FROST series and I will tell you my friends, it is ROUGH. It is the train wreck version of a manuscript. It is a hot mess of spilled coffee and split infinitives and angry notes in the margins. It looks like me after a night at the bar...

Ahem. So what comes next? After you've churned out this glorious pile of words and lumped them together in an order that vaguely makes sense. At least, enough to create a story. What's step two?

STEP TWO: Leave it alone.

Step two is always about gaining some perspective. Just, let the story chill out for a bit. The idea is to put enough distance between you and your non-masterpiece, so that when you go back and read it, the story is a tiny bit foreign to you, almost like you wrote it, but you don't QUITE recognize the words. Like maybe an incredibly unbalanced evil twin from a parallel dimension typed this story out and dropped it off at your door.

Thanks a lot, Nire. (Naturally, your evil twin's name is the same as yours, only spelled backwards).

STEP THREE: Once you've given yourself some time (at least a week, I prefer a month, actually, but I'm short on time at this point and a week will have to do) then you can dive back into that sucker. I always take overall notes first, before reading, big picture things I know I'll need to change. Then I print it off and go to town.

STEP FOUR: Edit your face off!

Take note of all the major plot changes. Your first round should go big (or go home) and make note of all the big issues, don't sweat the small stuff (like editing your actual writing) until the second round of revisions, since you could be cutting out entire scenes and writing new ones. Don't waste time on editing words you might just cut later.

STEP FIVE: Eat chocolate. Maybe cry a little. 

STEP SIX: Type in all of your notes (usually I scribble all over the printed manuscript, but I often hate myself for this later as I'm squinting at the tear-drenched, tea-stained pages trying to make out my scribbles, most of which start to resemble the spiky writing of a lunatic in an asylum about halfway through the manuscript).

If you think you might end up with insane chicken scratch on your pages, simply take your notes in a separate notebook and label the page numbers that coincide with each edit.

STEP SEVEN: Go in for the smaller edits. Now that you've got all the big stuff done you can start making line edits and tightening the writing itself up (keep in mind, big stuff may take several rounds, you may want to edit separately for plot, characters, pacing, etc. A lot of people end up doing about four different drafts, it's up to you what your drafting style is).

STEP EIGHT: Watch this video. Now you can see my actual face saying things to you. WOWIE!