How to (Finally) Write that Novel

Okay, so you’ve decided you’re actually going to do it. This year, after so many years of procrastinating and excuses, you’re finally going to do NaNoWriMo.

It’s a breathtaking task, telling an entire story — with at least 50,000 words of prose — in no more than 30 days, and you’re probably wondering how to make it really, actually, truly, finally happen this year.

I mean, of course, you’ve always dreamed of writing a novel. You probably even think of yourself as being a writer already, in spite of the annoying fact that you haven’t quiiiite published anything yet.

Take a deep breath. This time it will be different.

You’ve had a big story idea simmering in your brain for a long time. Maybe you already know a few things about your main characters. Maybe you’ve outlined the structure of your plot and mapped out your major themes. If you’ve been tinkering with this idea for long enough, you might have even started getting a little bit… shall we say… obsessive about it.

Maybe you’ve already written essays about the political and economic dynamics of your world, or the history of its interplanetary society.

Maybe you’ve already designed a magic system.

Be honest. Is this you?

Like many other authors at this point, you’re probably experiencing a lot of anxiety about the writing process. The whole thing just seems so big, and so incredibly complicated. It’s hard to wrap your mind around it.

It’s perfectly normal to feel anxious and inadequate.

All this anxiety is putting you into a loop: when you feel anxious about your abilities as a writer, you procrastinate writing your actual story by distracting yourself with “world building.” But the more you keep procrastinating, the more anxious you’ll be about writing, and the more likely you’ll be to soothe yourself with the comfort of those same distractions.

Fortunately, I can help break you out of this loop. Consider this one simple piece of advice, as you start writing this November:

Explain nothing.

Imagine you’re watching a movie, and paint the picture you see, using vivid sensory language to capture the colors and textures of your scene. Open up your other senses too, and tell us about the sounds and smells and flavors your characters encounter as they move through your world. Listen to how they speak to each other, and transcribe their words and thoughts onto the page.

Be a strict documentarian. As the author, keep your own mouth shut, and resist the temptation to explain how everything works. Don’t tell us anything about the history of this world or the backstory of your characters. We’ll probably figure it out on our own, so you’ll probably never need those explanations anyhow.

But if you do, you can add those missing explanations later.

After you finish your first draft, show it to a few close friends. Don’t ask them what they think about your story, or if they like it. Your story won’t be ready for that kind of scrutiny quite yet. Instead, ask them to read the whole thing without taking any notes, except to make a mark whenever they’re confused.

Then, as you work on your final draft, you can go through all the marks made by your beta-readers and decide whether to resolve the confusion in those places by writing a few paragraphs of explanation.

It’s better to under-explain than to over-explain, and I have a hunch you have a tendency toward over-explaining things anyhow, so this will be good practice for you.

Good luck! You can do it!

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