I live a pretty great life. I make less money than most homeless people, but I enjoy what I do. I wake up every day and write for six or seven hours. I can’t think of a better way to spend my time. It is what I always dreamed of doing since I was a dumb kid hanging off the monkey bars in Ocoee, FL.

Now I’m eight books in, my weirdo short stories are published in various literary magazines published by pretty good universities, I’ve won a shit ton of awards, and most importantly, when people ask my searingly professional and blisteringly accomplished hot wife what I do for a living, she actually admits that I am a writer. She’s good with it.

But recently, someone asked me about my process. Until this year, I would have laughed and directed their attention to the 84 combustible opossums writhing in my dome. But that was then. Now things are different. For thirty-odd years, I was an adolescent writer. Now I’ve grown up and I have a goddam method.

I approach an idea with the end in mind. I plan. I write to that plan. I don’t stop until it’s done. However, there’s more to it, so let’s get into the details for you people who are currently apansed and panicked in your fictional efforts.

1. Capture and qualify your idea

Ideas are savage, toothy creatures hustling their way through the debris of your unconscious, snuffling through your neuroses for a scrap of food and a place to fornicate themselves into existence. They’re trapped and they want to be free. If they see an opening, they don’t fucking care what time it is, if you’re driving, or if you’re en flagrant delicto, they’re coming out. So learn how to capture them quickly or they’ll run away out your bedroom window and crawl into your neighbor’s left ear and then that son-of-a-bitch will write the next great American novel and he cuts his grass too short and drives a fugly car. He doesn’t deserve it.

You do. So carry a notebook and a pen. Keep it by your bed. Bring it into the bathroom. Shove it over the visor in your car. When a wild idea tries to escape, you stab that pen right through it’s heart and write it’s ass down.

Later, you open up that notebook and open up a doc in Word (or whatever, I don’t preach) and flesh it out. Write as much as you want but write it as an idea, not as the thing it wants to be. Then, once you have it pink and pudgy on the page, you take a good look at it and decide if it’s worth getting into a relationship with. I mean, there it is, naked as they day it was born, so you get to look it over before you commit. Maybe it’s a good idea for later. Maybe it’s been done–which doesn’t disqualify it. But if it’s been done well, then it does.

What you’re doing is not just capturing an idea but protecting your production. You’re already working on something (right? Right?). It’s vital that you protect yourself from the sexy allure of a new idea. Especially once the honeymoon is over and you’re in the day-to-day grind of cranking out words in Act 2, in the long middle. It’s easy to get distracted. Don’t. Catch that fucker and file it away in a folder labelled IDEAS. Come back to it when you’re done.

When you’re ready to bring this good idea to life, do it like this.

Caveat: this is how I do it. Every writer works differently. This works for me, your mileage may vary. However, if you’re struggling to bring a book to “the end,” then just fucking try it. Also, what we’re aiming for here, the end result of all this, is a really, really good first draft. Some people would say this is a manuscript, but not me. At then end of this process, you’ll have a first draft you should be proud of that you can take to your favorite (most feared) ruthless reader.

 

2. Dedicate a notebook to this idea.

Trust me. This is vital. It’s the easiest way to keep all your notes and ephemera in one place. This thing is a journal, a map, and a scrapbook of the birth of your novel. can you do this all on a computer? Yeah, if you’re a fucking idiot. Writing by hand is a million times more thorough than typing. It’s more fulfilling—not just in an emotional, sensual way, but in how it fulfills your idea. I could cite a fuck ton of science right now about the efficacy of writing by hand, but let me just lay this on you: until recently, all great writers wrote by hand. There is something about the cadence of it, about the minute decisions you make as you carve each word into the paper, and about the heft of this notebook. It’s real. There’s a subtle message there. Do it.

 

 

 

Put this in the notebook:

 

1. 1. The idea itself, written like a fucking mission statement. Write that idea down with care and precision.

1. 1. Nuts and Bolts—Start with listing all the stuff any book entry online would list: genre, word count, etc. Word count is especially important (to me, I’m a blue collar writer).

1. 1. Maps–you need to draw maps. Not that they’ll Tolkien their way into the book, but because the description of how your characters move, of where they go, of where they look must make sense. If it doesn’t your reader will know it, perhaps unconsciously, but they’ll know. They’re building a map as they follow your people, so you better draw that map first to make sure left, left, right makes sense in the world you create.

1. 1. Cast—Write down all the people who will be in the book. If you don’t know their names, that’s normal. That makes sense, you’re not there yet. But you can write things like “The Mentor,” and “The Temptress,” and “the cobbler, the driver, the dragon slayer” whoever is in your mind right now as you roll this idea around in your head, put them on paper. Figure out who they are, where they belong.

1. 1. The Story Spine—not the plot, so much, but the barest minimum explanation of what will happen in the book. Pixar is brilliant at this. Get it down, revise it, massage it, fuck with it, break it, put it back together and do that over and over IN THE NOTEBOOK, until you have it right.

1. 1. All the other plot templates—I use them all: the heroic journey, Dan Brown’s story cycle, Vogler’s template, and the Lester Dent template. find your favorites. Use them all until you have a good idea of where your story is going.

1. 1. Character interviews, sketches, etc—Use the Proust questionnaire. Trust me. I learned more about my characters in the hour or so I spent pretending to be them answering the questions on this thing than at any other time in their creation before writing. This may be the first time your characters come alive and I would say do the work and run one for every character in your book. However, if you’re not ready for that kind of effort, at least do the protagonist, the antagonist, and whichever other character is most important.

1. 1. A loose threads database—as you write, you’ll add things into your story and realize you may need to remember them later. You may discover your main character when to Vasser so you need to put that info into the database. You may have the hero leave some seemingly inconsequential item in a locker at a bus station and realize you will need to come back for it. Keep all these things listed so when you are finishing up your story, you can make sure there are no loose threads to annoy your reader.

1. 1. Research—You’ll write questions in the margins as you write your first draft. Stuff like “What kind of gun?” and “Is this a living phrase in 1887?” But you’ll also collect notes on your world, on the characters, on weirdo shit like how place names were constructed in middle English.

 

3. Sketch it out

Use all the information you’ve developed and collected to sketch out your plot. Divide this stuff up into three acts, then just knock it out. Be messy, don’t worry too much, all this shit’s gonna change anyway. But get her down. Now look at it and read it and let it marinate overnight then write it again. Repeat as necessary until you have a sketch that makes sense. Here’s a picture of my sketch for Mudlark.

 

4. Sketch out your scenes

Look, I’m a fucking weirdo and I think a lot about word count. I believe it’s a good idea to follow the instructions of pros who talk about how many scenes a novel should have. Now look, there’s no rule about this. You can have as many scenes as you want. Nothing should hold you back or limit your creativity, especially adhering to some kind of scene math.

But I’m a process nerd and this appeals to me. Check out this article about the structure of a story. These are the scenes a reader unconsciously expects and believe me, you can break down every book from Ovid to As I Lay Dying and find every one of these artifacts in the plot.

However, let’s say you follow the typical format of a typical genre novel, you’ll have 50 to 60 scenes. That’s assuming you’re knocking out an 80K to 100K word count. I write short novels–38,00 to 50,00 words. So I have fewer scenes. My current WIP is divided into twenty-two.

Why does this matter? Shouldn’t you just be allowed to write whatever you want as long as you want? Fuck yes. However, we’re writing to a plan in this lecture so shut the fuck up and pay attention. Figure out how many scenes each section has, then write a line item scene outline for the novel. I usually notate each scene based on what it’s supposed to do because I am a hack and I follow formulae.

Now, starting with Act 1 Scene 1, sketch that shit out. Don’t hold back. You’re not writing graphs, you’re writing lines. Be messy. Cross stuff out. Spill ink. Curse. here’s a picture of mine.

Also, please listen to me: do this in pencil. Do it by hand. Don’t fucking argue with me. Do it.

5. Do it again.

Read that fucker. Make notes. Marginalia. Doodles. Cross stuff out. Add stuff in tiny crimped cursive between the lines.

Then write the whole thing again.

 

6. Do it again, but neatly.

This is a personal peculiarity, but it has made all the difference for me in a way I can’t articulate. Rewrite your sketched-out scenes for Act 1. Write them with beautifully rendered headings and then write each sentence on a separate line. Take your time and write as neatly as you can and yes, this is slow work, and yes it is steppy steppy and yes I know you want to leap into the opening scene. But don’t. Pay heed to how magic works. While you are lettering your scenes with such precision and care, your undermind is losing it’s shit, fleashing out each scene, learning new truths about the story, making its own notes, and pounding on the door to be set free.

I encourage you to do this for Act 1 only.

Now, now turn to the next blank page and write your opening line. It’s been sitting there the whole time, simmering down into a delicious, fragrant sauce. Lay it down and write every scene according to your notes, adding flesh to that skeleton until you’re done and you accidentally cross the line into Act 2 (happens every time).

7. Outline the rest of your novel.

Now, reading what you’ve written, make notes on your sketched out scenes then follow the instructions for step 6 for the rest of the novel. Outline this mofo all the way through the epilogue. Do not skimp.

 

8. Finish it.

Now you’re cooking with gas. You’re knocking out a scene every day. You’re finding not only did the meticulous planning not ruin your honeymoon phase, it made it better. You’re writing 1500 words or more for every scene. You feel, you see the story spool out before you. The whole thing is solid, not ephemeral. It’s really there.

9. While writing scenes.

You have scenes written in longhand all the way through Act 1 and deep into Act 2. You’re adding a scene a day. Now comes some of the nuts & bolts professional writing stuff. After you finish writing a scene in longhand, go back to your first scene and enter it into your writing program.

I use Scrivener and if you don’t you’re an idiot because it was designed by God for writers like you and me. Type your longhand story into your laptop and try, try as hard as you can, to resist the temptation of editing as you type. You are merely transferring your written docs into electronic docs. Don’t elaborate.

 

 

 

 

10. The editing process.

Here’s how I work a scene once it’s in Scrivener.

 

1. 1. Label the scene. You can use any scheme you want. Here’s mine: nothing means it’s newly entered with no revision. Yellow means I’ve edited for grammar, punctuation, and spelling. Green means I’ve gone through two more steps we will talk about below, and blue means it is finished.

1. 1. Edit for basics. Copy a scene into Word. Use Word’s editor to fix spelling and, with your guidance, fix grammar mistakes. Be careful, it’s a fucking program so it doesn’t recognize nuance nor humor.

1. 1. Print that fucker. This is your first real read-through. Make sure the pages are numbered. In Scrivener, you can ‘compile’ a scene into manuscript form right into Word. Read it to find better phrasing, to fix bad writing, to fix naming mistakes, for syntax, and for diction. When you’re done, it should look like Caesar’s toga. Fix in Scrivener. Label that scene Yellow.

1. 1. Edit for Show/Tell–Copy or compile the scene into Word. Find and Replace {period-space} with {period–paragraph mark}. This will put every sentence on its own line. Add spaces between the graphs. Make the whole thing 1.5 or double-spaced. Print it. Read each line (I sometimes shuffle the pages so I’m not reading in order) and ask yourself if it shows or if it tells. Sometimes, you need a run of sentences that tell. But when you can show an action instead of reporting it, you should. This is what leads to better writing. Fix in Scrivener. Label it green.

1. 1. Read aloud—Print the fixed scene double-spaced, close your office door or go into a bathroom or wait until nobody’s home and read the scene out loud. DO NOT SKIP THIS STEP! Listen to your story. This is not just about making your writing better. It’s a service to your reader. When they read your story, your voice will echo in their head. Respect that space and make sure it flows smoothly. when you read aloud, you will hear yourself stumble or grope to understand or in some other way interrupt the flow. Edit these spots to smooth them out. Read it over. Get this right. Label it blue—it’s manuscript ready.