Writing the first draft of any novel is a balancing act of creativity, drive, and forgiveness. You need the creative spirit to imagine your characters coming together; the drive to commit words to paper (or Google Docs); the forgiveness to accept that the first words to be written are not perfect. So what is an author to do?
My advice is to learn how to write quickly and effectively. Writing quickly keeps the creativity and drive to complete your novel alive. When you write quickly, you move from scene to scene, action to action, which keeps your brain constantly excited for the new thing you’re writing. But writing 200 words a minute of absolute nonsense is not helpful. Which leads to writing effectively.
Writing effectively is building the foundation of your story solidly in the first draft so that every succeeding draft builds upon it. The foundation of your story is the scenes that move the plot forward. This does not mean that every scene in your story is foundational. (Some scenes are fluff and that’s okay!) Therefore to write effectively (for the first draft) is to write the scenes that are fundamental for your plot.
So how does one write quickly and effectively? Here are my Top 5 favorite ways!
1. Outline
Duh. Anyone familiar with my #Publish2022 method is rolling their eyes. I’ve said it many times that an outline is the most effective way to know what is happening in your story and why it is happening.
In addition to all that, outlines are extremely helpful for writers to write scenes out of order. If you wake up on a writing day, and really want to write the climax of the story even though you haven’t even finished the inciting incident, your outline is there to guide you through it! This means that not only are you effective in your writing (not wasting time trying to figure out how the climax is going to happen) but you’ll also be quick in your writing because you are following your muse.
2. Set Aside Time
Obviously, in order to write, you need time to write—but this piece of advice goes beyond setting a schedule or putting “Writing Time” in your calendar like an appointment. That’s all well and good…until you’re “writing time” suddenly becomes “chore time,” or “Let me answer this urgent email real quick time.”
When you set aside time to write, make sure you can actually write during that time with few or no distractions. For example, I prefer to write early in the morning (around 7 am) because no one else is up and around to bother me at that time. I can write for two uninterrupted hours while the world slowly wakes up.
Additionally, there is the very important benefit of productivity at 7 am for me! (This will obviously not work for everyone.) The time you set aside to write should also be a time where you feel creative and productive! At 7 am, I’m slowly waking up and less critical of my writing in the morning; this assists me in writing quickly and effectively.
So, when you are looking to find a time to write quickly and effectively, you are looking for a time of day where you’ll have few or no distractions and you feel the most productive.
3. Use Placeholders
A Placeholder is a word you use to signal “I need to come back to this but I’m not much in the groove of writing to stop now.” My favorite placeholder is the word “INSERT.” For example, if I’m writing a scene and I forget what color the character’s eyes are, I’ll write something like this:
Jane stared deep into Luke’s INSERT EYE COLOR eyes.
This is a trick of writing quickly and effectively. Instead of wasting time going through my outline to find out what color Luke’s eyes are, I put in a placeholder. I made the placeholder obvious in all caps; I made it easy to find by using the word INSERT, knowing I’ll just Control/Command-F during my editing stage to find all my placeholders; and I told my future, editing self what I wanted to write there—Luke’s eye color.
INSERT is just one example of a placeholder word. Some people use words that would never be in their story, like KLINGON or ELROND or maybe a string of nonsense letters that has meaning for them. The trick is to make your placeholder an easy-to-type word that you will remember.
4. DO NOT EDIT
This will be the hardest part for some writers. There’s an icth itch in our brain to edit every misspelled word. Or maybe it’s to find the write right word because if you write “effective” one more time you’re giong going to throw your computer into the wall.
I have an easy to follow 3 Step Plan for this that has worked wonders for me.
Step 1)
Let it go. Continue writing as if you can’t see the mistakes; continue writing even though you know you can phrase that better. Continue writing even though that’s not quite the word for the moment.
Step 2)
Schedule time for review. If you have two hours to write, write for an hour and half. In the last 30 minutes, go back through what you’ve written and edit as much as you please for those 30 minutes. And then stop.
Step 3)
Stop. Seriously, stop editing. Editing is a step of its own (an entire 3 month quarter of its own!) So when the 30 minutes are up, let it go again with the knowledge that you’ll come back to it later.
It is way too easy to get caught up in editing. But it is a recipe for slow and ineffective writing. Get it all down on paper first, and then go in with the hard-core edits.
5. Writing Sprints
Writing Sprints are my absolute favorite way to write. Writing Sprints is basically a writer-specific term for the “Pomodoro Method.” For those unfamiliar with the Pomodoro Method, the idea is to work for a set amount of time (20mins, 30mins, 50mins) and then take a timed break (5mins, 10mins, 15mins).
The trick with the Pomodoro Method is to find the balance between how long your work session should be and how long your break needs to be. For example, I prefer to write in 20min/10min sprints. So, I write for 20 minutes and then take a 10-minute break. 20 minutes works for me because near the end of the 20-minute mark I always find myself staring blankly at the computer screen—thus I know that if I tried to write for 30 minutes, the last 10 of those minutes would be ineffective and no writing would be done. A 10-minute break also works for me because it’s enough time to disengage from writing while not being too long that I get distracted by another activity.
The timing for your Writing Sprints may differ. I suggest working with a few different timings to figure out what works best for your level of focus. Ask yourself these two questions while working on the Pomodoro Method. To figure out how long your work session should be ask yourself: At what minute mark does my focus begin to falter and I start looking for my phone? To figure out how long your break should be, ask yourself: At what minute mark do I look for another activity to start/get too sucked into taking a long break?
While sprinting, I manage about 300-400 per 20-minute session! This is my trick to writing quickly!
Bonus Tip
Be gentle with yourself. Writing is a joy! There is an exhilaration (and a bit of a rush!) to finish writing a story quickly, but don’t forget to enjoy the process. After all, writing is FUN!
