Getting Words on the Page

Going from zero words to thousands

I’ve been semi-offline since Cover Story came out, working on a few big writing projects, including three very different/very distinct novels (one is a YA novel, another is science fiction, and the other is more in the upmarket fiction category).

For one of these novels, I’m just getting started on it and writing the first drafts of the first chapters. When I was working on it yesterday, I realized that finally — after publishing three books — I have kind of sort of figured out a foolproof way to get the words on the page and go from nothing to something relatively quickly. (It’s something I wish I had figured out when I was younger.)

There are an overwhelmingly large number of things that go into writing a story (not publishing it or selling it or any of that, which is a whole other beast, but just writing the damn thing). You’ve gotta have the idea, the characters, the plot, the structure, the tone, the voice, the POV, the theme, the scenes, the dialogue, the balance between exposition and dialogue, yada, yada, yada. And then, at some point after figuring all of this out or in parallel with figuring it out (or maybe even before figuring any of it out!), you have to get the words on the page.

I almost never sit down with a blank page and start writing. I’ve done it before, but the results were never that great. My mind wanders. I get distracted. Before I know it, I’ve written a bunch of crap and end up deleting every word of it.

Instead, I always start with something. It could be a character. It could be a scene. It could be an ending. A beginning. A feeling. A theme. A problem. Once I have something, I let my mind wander. A lot of daydreaming goes into my writing. I spend much more time daydreaming than actually typing anything into my computer.

After hours and hours of daydreaming, there’s a point where I have the big questions answered. I know — I feel — what the story is. Where it begins and ends. Who the major characters are. (These things may change later in the process, but I really try not to overthink it this early in the process.) I do a lot of outlining: what are the major plot points? What are the character arcs? I put up post it notes on the wall of my office, and I start asking myself a lot of questions: How do we get from here to there? Why does this thing have to happen as opposed to some other thing? I try to get a feeling for the whole story, and try to iron out any plot issues early on.

At a certain point in this process, the story begins to feel real. I know these characters, I know this story, I know what happened, I know what this character was thinking or feeling, and I feel it too.

This is when I actually start to write. And this is the hardest part.

The temptation, for me, is to overthink it. I want it to be perfect. I want it to be immediately wonderful. I want it to immediately be the exact thing I see in my head. I want my vision to be fully realized on the paper. But I’ve found that if I try to do this, I get absolutely nowhere. I stare at a page that says nothing but “CHAPTER 1” for days and days on end, agonizing over how to make it just right. So I don’t do that anymore.

Actually, that’s a lie: At the start of every project, when I have that blank page of a first draft and the only words on the page are “CHAPTER 1,” I still have this extremely powerful desire to immediately put perfect words on the page. And I stare at the page for 15 minutes. 30 minutes. 1 hour. And then…I get bored of attempting to be perfect, and I move on. The desire for perfection is out of my system. And THEN I can finally get to work.

Which brings me to what I want to share with you: I get the words on the page by describing the vision in my head in the most basic terms possible. Extremely basic. Like, painfully basic. I mean, like this: “This guy has been king for four years. On this particular night, everything changes. And there’s a big meeting.” I fill in the details. Here are the other characters are at the meeting. Here’s what they do at the meeting. Here are the things that, in my vision of this, I notice about the meeting. Here’s what they say. Here’s why they say it. Here’s where they are. Here’s why they’re there. Here is the feeling I want to be in the scene. Here’s how this scene fits into the bigger arc of the story.

And I keep writing like this. If I know a particular detail or know a better way to say something, I’ll put it in. An important part of this is refusing to judge my own writing. There’s just no point. Somewhere down the line, I’ll ask myself “is this good?” or — what usually happens — I’ll send it to one of my agents and ask, “is this good?” But I try not to overthink it. Because I know that I will write and re-write and edit and revise every single word countless times, and each time, I’ll be able to get a little closer to realizing the vision in my head.

So, if you’re struggling to get words on the page, maybe give this a try. Start with a vision. And then, write down the most basic possible description of the vision in your head. Then re-write it until it’s as close to your vision as you can possibly make it.

Good luck!

<3