Three Days before Launch... Tips & Tricks to Writing Quickly

Finals School GIFfrom Finals GIFs

​Okay, here's a status update. I'll be regularly posting these as we go.

Book summaries finished: 52
Chapter-by-chapter outlines finished: 52
Character sketches complete: 30 (oops - need to hustle)
Character images saved: 0 (double oops - time to scroll for images online!!!)

As you can tell from my list, I like to be prepared (but have fallen a bit behind). I SHOULD have all of these things complete by the time I start on Tuesday (or, at least, nearly done). Being prepared is the key to writing quickly. As long as you have a chapter-by-chapter outline and you know your characters, you can write ANYTHING quickly. It's your roadmap to writing your book. Without it, you're flailing to figure things out, and you're much more likely to add in contradictions in the plot and in the characters and then have to go back and fix those later.

One self-pubbed book I read fairly recently had a girl who absolutely HATED milk in Chapter 1 - she would never touch the stuff. A couple of chapters later, the scene opens with her drinking a big ol' glass of milk. While I don't know if the author outlined the book or not - or created a character sheet or not - being organized about both BEFORE you start writing can help avoid problems like these in your novels.

That doesn't meant that you can't jump off the path from your outline now and again. I totally do. I began my writing life as a pantser, but quickly learned that I would sometimes write myself into a corner. There's nothing worse than having to throw out your three latest chapters and start again because the story can't continue as you've written it.

So, in the interests of not wasting my time, I learned to outline. And now I'm pretty good at sticking to the script and figuring out how to stay within my wordcount. Most of my chapters will be between 1500-3500 words, with a few veering off into slightly more or slightly less. That way, I can estimate a book's wordcount AND self-edit myself so that I stay on track to finish 40,000 words in a week for my Author Versus AI project.

However, that doesn't mean you're locked into the outline exactly as it is when you're writing. I like to futz around with some scenes and add more ideas that I never thought about when outlining. That's part of the fun of creativity. Sometimes I'll add whole scenes, as long as the overall organization of the plot stays the same. That gives me both structure and freedom when I write - the best of both worlds.

​That's all for now, but look out for my next writing update on April 23rd!