How Structure Can Make First Drafts Fun to Write by Christa MacDonald

Christa MacDonald

 How Structure Can Make First Drafts Fun to Write 

by Christa MacDonald

There’s a voice we all hear as we write a first draft. It’s like someone reading over our shoulder, pointing at the words on the page and whispering, "That’s garbage. You should delete this whole page." This isn’t the voice of doubt. It is your internal editor piping up at the wrong stage, and it needs to shut up.

There is nothing like an internal editor to ruin a first draft. I remember when I wrote my first book. Back then, my internal editor didn’t know enough so she didn’t really bother me. Writing that draft was a positive experience. Now I have a few books under my belt, and she’s louder. She knows more too. Often she’ll pester me about repeated words, weak dialogue, over-used gestures in my characters, "you’ve already had him shake his head in this scene." Helpful advice, but not on a first draft. 

I started off my writing career as a pantser, but a struggle with a draft made me a plotter. I had heard that book two (the book you write after selling your first) was legendarily hard to write. Three months into writing mine, I had learned this was all too true. I struggled long and hard over that book and in the end I decided that half the battle was that little voice in my head questioning every choice I made. My internal editor sabotaged me at every stage, leeching the joy out of writing a scene, sapping my motivation. In the end, the plot flailed around and if not for the help of a content editor, that book would never have seen the light of day.

For book three, I turned to the Snowflake Method from Randy Ingermanson. I found it easier to produce a first draft when I had a roadmap. My internal editor had a whole lot less to say when I had the bones of the book already in place. I could ignore her fussing because I knew the structure was solid, and I could fix the rest of it in editing. It was still ugly, but it didn’t take me a year to write it and more importantly, I actually enjoyed the process this time. If slogging through the second book had made me hate writing, silencing my internal editor with some structure made me love it again.

Even if you’re a die-hard pantser, I still recommend getting a rough idea down. And I definitely recommend muzzling your internal editor. Let your first draft be ugly. Give yourself room to write some terrible stuff. Editing will fix what needs fixing. Let the first draft be the giddy, mad, creative stage where you entertain all possibilities.

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The Redemption Road

It’s redemption that he needs, and she’ll pay any price to help him find it.

As the new game warden in Sweet River, Alex Moretti is focused on enforcing Maine’s wildlife laws and little else. Moving from tragedy to a fresh start, all he wants is a way to fix his life in the tranquility of the north woods. Until he meets Annie Caldwell at Coffee by the Book. But his own bitter, dark life is a threat to Annie’s sweetness and light. It’s better for him to stay away.

Annie doesn’t know how to label her relationship with Alex, but she is determined to figure it out.  After a few false starts and a kiss under the Christmas lights, their romance goes from fiction to fact. Annie has fallen hard. Then trouble shows up. Someone is stalking Alex, seeking to punish him for a mistake which ended in deadly consequences. When Annie becomes a target, he tries to push her away, but she won’t abandon him. Alex is desperate to keep Annie safe while he attempts to reconcile the past, but what he really needs is redemption. And she will risk her life to help him find it.

~~~~~

Christa MacDonald began her writing career at the age of eleven, filling a sketchbook with poems and short stories. While at Gordon College she traded the sketchbooks for floppy discs, publishing short personal narratives in the literary journal The Idiom. After graduation and traveling cross-country she settled down to focus first on her career in operations management and then her growing family. When her children reached grade school Christa returned to her love of writing, finding the time between conference calls, dance lessons, and baseball games. This November Mountain Brook Ink will be publishing her first novel, The Broken Trail. When not at her desk working or writing, Christa can be found curled up in her favorite chair reading, out and about with her husband and kids, or in the garden. She lives with her family along the coast of Massachusetts in the converted barn they share with a dog and two formerly-feral cats.

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Christa-MacDonald/e/B01GGIU8D8
Website: https://christamacdonald.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/CricketMacD
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ChristaMacDonaldAuthor/
BookBub: https://www.bookbub.com/authors/christa-macdonald

Dreams by Lynn Chandler-Willis

Lynn Chandler Willis

If you hop over to my Facebook timeline and scroll to last year about this time, you’ll probably see a status update about writing my Emmy acceptance speech when I was a little girl. I’m a big TV fan. Always have been and always will be. The Emmys will be awarded tonight. When I was a kid and wrote my acceptance speech it wasn’t for acting, directing, producing — it was for writing. I even wrote a spec script for a show called “The White Shadow” while I was in high school.

Of all the award shows, the Emmys have always been my favorite. Except for the year they snubbed Robert Duvall for best actor for his role in Lonesome Dove. Still shaking my head on that one.

Well, as I aged, my acceptance speech never really wavered. It always ended with the line “dreams really do come true.” Of course the older I got, the more fleeting the dream seemed. But the more encouraging it was to younger writers because, even at my, um, older age, I was living proof, it can be done.

So…where is all this leading us? To my acceptance speech. No, not for the Emmy you silly goose — that’ll be next year. My acceptance speech for winning the 2013 Minotaur Books/Private Eye Writers of America Best First Private Eye Novel competition. Thanks to the Private Eye Writers of America and St. Martin’s Press, my favorite PI, Gypsy Moran, will come to life!
The award was presented Friday night at the Shamus Awards Banquet, coinciding with this year’s Bouchercon. I wasn’t able to actually attend because, well, it costs money and I’ve got six grandkids with birthdays coming up.

So anyway, Robert Randisi, founder and past President of the Private Eye Writers of America, sent me an email last week congratulating me on the win. He says he understands I will not be at the conference but would I like to make a comment to be read. Oh….Robert….you don’t know how long I’ve had this little speech written.


Dreams really do come true.

Dora here. What's your dream?

Does it seem to be fading as the years pass?

What are you doing to make it a reality?

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A little boy, beaten and left to die in an alley.  A cop with a personal life out of control. When their worlds collide, God intervenes. Detective Ellie Saunders's homicide investigation takes a dramatic turn when a young victim "wakes up" in the morgue. The child has no memory prior to his "rising" except walking with his father along a shiny road. Ellie likes dealing with facts. She'd rather leave all the God-talk to her father, a retired minister, and to her partner, Jesse, a former vice cop with an annoying habit of inserting himself into her life. But will the facts she follows puts Ellie's life in mortal danger? And will she finally allow God into her heart forever? 

Lynn Chandler-Willis has worked in the corporate world (hated it!), the television news business (fun job) and the newspaper industry (not a fan of the word "apparently" and phrase "according to"). She keeps coming back to fiction because she likes making stuff up and you just can't do that in the newspaper or television news business.

She was born, raised, and continues to live in the heart of North Carolina within walking distance to her kids and their spouses and her nine grandchildren. She shares her home, and heart, with Sam the cocker spaniel.

She is the author of the best-selling true crime book, Unholy Covenant. Her debut novel, The Rising (Pelican Book Group) was released in July 2013. Chandler-Willis is the 2013 winner of the Minotaur Books/Private Eye Novel Writers of America Best First Private Eye Novel competition for her novel, Wink of an Eye.

Perseverance – Never Give Up – Never Surrender by Renee Andrews

“Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.” James 1:4

A few years back, right after my first sale, I was asked how many manuscripts I’d completed before finally making a sale.  I know authors who can say, “My first manuscript sold.”  Wow!  I think that’s wonderful!  Amazing, even!  But my answer was nowhere near my first manuscript.  In fact, I’d written 21 complete manuscripts before the first sale.  Double digits. 

Now, before you start wondering how I found editors that continued to read my work after I sent that many manuscripts, let me explain that the majority of those never made it to the post office.  I knew they weren’t ready, and I didn’t want my first impression to be anything less than my best.  So I kept writing until I thought I got it right. 

Realizing that I might not be the only author who’d had a test of perseverance on the way to publication, I polled a few authors and learned that there are several who were also into double digits before they sold…

• Renee Andrews (21)
• Stephanie Rowe (18)
• Tanya Michaels (14)
• Karen L. King (14)
• Jennifer Lewis (12)
• Beth Cornelison (12)
• Jennifer Echols (10)
• Bonnie Gardner (10)
• Lois Winston (10)
• Jane Myers Perrine (10)

What advice would these double digit authors give those who are continuing to write, but haven’t received that coveted call yet?

Renee Andrews

Write every day. Don’t stop at partials (I didn’t allow myself to start another manuscript until the one in progress was complete).  Set your goals high.  Enter contests (you never know when your future editor will be judging that entry – but by all means, have the manuscript finished and ready to go if it is requested).  Don’t be discouraged by the stack of manuscripts under your bed. Consider each one another step closer to the goal.  Good writing and good storytelling takes practice.  And finally, celebrate milestones, no matter how small they appear (finish a chapter – go out for sushi, get a request – go out for sushi, win a contest – more sushi).  Are you sensing the pattern here? I love sushi ;) 

Stephanie Rowe

Keep trying to improve. Write new stories—don’t get bogged down in revising existing ones. I really found that by the time I started a new manuscript, I’d evolved enough as a writer that the new story was fundamentally at a different level than my previous times. The few times I tried to go back and rework old stories, I discovered that I still instinctively worked within the parameters of that early story (even if I rewrote a new story from scratch with the same characters), which meant that the story still have the same fundamental flaws as the original. Write new, be self-critical, and keep striving to get better. Take online classes, go to conferences and take workshops and never think you’re as good as you’re going to get! And SUBMIT! I had over 130 rejections before I sold and I’d entered 97 contests.

Tanya Michaels

Keep writing, keep submitting, and keep in mind what one bestselling author once told me, "The difference between a published and unpublished author is one person's opinion."  You just have to find that one senior editor who loves your stuff and is willing to approve the buy...which won't happen if you don't submit!  Meantime, there's a terrific collection of Snoopy "rejection" comic strips that kept me laughing.

Karen L King

You are in charge of your destiny. You can choose failure by quitting.  And it really does come down to those who are willing to persevere, those who are willing to really work at improving their craft, those who are producing new stories, and putting the work out there again and again are the people that will be successful. I've seen a lot of really talented authors fall by the wayside, because they're not willing to learn, or not willing to risk rejection, or they keep rewriting or submitting the same thing over and over again.  So keep plugging forward.

 Jennifer Lewis 

Keep working! You can only get there if you keep trying. There is an element of luck involved, but you can only be lucky if you are in the right place at the right time, so keep writing and submitting. If you get any feedback from editors, agents, authors, etc, take it to heart and use it to improve your craft, because you get better with each book you write.

Beth Cornelison

Don't give up! Study the market. Don't give up! Educate yourself in the business. And did I mention, don't give up? :-)

Jennifer Echols

Write the book you want to read.

Bonnie Gardner  

Hang in there. Practice makes perfect. 

Lois Winston

Keep writing. Don't give up. My first novel was a 50,000 word romance that spanned 35 years.  Ten years later that book had been revised into a 95,000 word romantic suspense that takes place over the course of a few months.  It became the second book I sold.

 Jane Myers Perrine 

Keep writing. Keep submitting. You won't sell if you don't.

Renee Andrews spends a lot of time in the gym. No, she isn't working out. Her husband, a former All-American gymnast, co-owns ACE Cheer Company, an all-star cheerleading company. She is thankful the talented kids at the gym don't have a problem when she brings her laptop and writes while they sweat.  When she isn't writing, she's typically traveling with her husband, bragging about their two sons or spoiling their bulldog. 

Renee is a kidney donor and actively supports organ donation.  She welcomes prayer requests and loves to hear from readers! Write to her at Renee@ReneeAndrews.com or visit her Web site at www.reneeandrews.com. Her newest book, Picture Perfect Family, released in February.

 

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