Writing Tips

4. Five Tips for Writing First Drafts of Novels

This chapter is on a few tips for writing first drafts.

However, before we start, we have a couple of words of warning. If you feel these tips don't apply to you or won't work with your writing habits, whatever they may be, simply ignore the tips. If your writing habits work well (as in you hardly get writer's block and you are experienced in finishing multiple first drafts), don't feel like you have to follow our tips. These tips are for writers who may need help going about writing that first draft or may need some reassurance.

1. Have at least a basic understanding of your own plot
In writing, there are planners and then there are pantsers. Planners plan almost every detail of their novel before writing. Pantsers don't plan much of anything and tend to just wing it. While different writing approaches work for different people, it's always a good idea to have at least a basic understanding of your own plot. This isn't so much for the sake of creativity. It won't even help you write a better novel, but it will help you stay organized and stop you falling into plot situations that lead to writer's block.

Basically, your understanding of your plot is is your exit strategy. If you know what is supposed to happen next, writer's block (at least writers block caused by plot holes) will be much less frequent.

2. Know your own characters well
Similar to the idea of knowing your own plot, knowing your characters can help with progressing character development, keeping away writer's block, as well as keep your own characters in, well, character. If your character is as much a stranger to you as it is to your readers, it can be hard to picture what your character will do next. Knowing your own character means knowing their strengths, weaknesses, hopes, fears, motivations, personality, beliefs, and lastly, their basic appearance. Notice that we said appearance last. Your character's appearance, while it is important for your descriptions, doesn't normally help drive the plot or help your character react to the plot.

Does your character's perfect caramel colored hair make major life decisions for your character? It shouldn't. And so when writing your characters, focus more on their personality and motivations and less on their appearance. Remember, no matter how cheesy it may sound, it's what's on the inside that counts.

3. Don't focus on word count.
Writing chapters can be hard. Writing novels can be hard. So do yourself a favor and ignore that word count. As long as you achieve what you are hoping to achieve plot wise in each chapter, that word count shouldn't really matter when it comes to traditional novel writing. However, if you are writing for a contest that has a word count limit completely disregard this tip! (There are also basic word count tips to keep in mind when writing on Wattpad, but we'll mention that in a later chapter.)

4. Have a decent idea of what your world looks like

First off, we're not saying to know what kind of trees there are or how the houses are built (though that could be helpful for descriptions). We're more talking along the lines of what are the rules of your story's world? Does every kind of magic have rules? Is education available to everyone? Is there a class system? Who rules the world? What is important to the people of your world? What isn't important to the people of your world? Are there religions? What kind of jobs are available in your world?

These may seem like basic questions and they may not apply to your story if the world you're using is our modern day one, but they do have relevancy. By keeping in mind the rules and culture of the world you create or have your story in, you can give yourself a better understanding of your characters and their lives.

5. Worry about the editing... After
The first draft is called a draft for a reason. It's not meant to be perfect. It's not even meant to be very close to your finished novel. If it makes you feel better, certainly do a quick spelling and grammar check before showing a chapter to anyone, but try not to edit sentence by sentence until the entire first draft is done. It can distract you from your plot and it's also one of the best ways to lower your self-confidence if you've never written a novel before. Don't discourage yourself. Everyone makes mistakes. Just wait to worry about yours until a little bit after you've finished that first draft.

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And that's it! Next chapter should be coming sometime tomorrow! If you have any questions, comments, or concerns, feel free to message us or leave us a comment in the comment section below!