5 Things I Learned Writing Chapter 1

I’ve officially reached my first checkpoint.  Chapter one is finished!  Well, the first draft of it is anyway.  Still, that’s super exciting.  I also have exceeded my word count goal for this two-week period.  As it stands right now, Chapter 1 is 2,950 words.   That roughly translates to 10-12 pages in a paperback.  So this first two weeks of writing has gone as well as I’d have hoped.  I’ve still got a long way to go, but the momentum is there, and I want to keep that going. 

On top of that, I managed to learn a few things about the book, my characters, and myself during the writing process.  This is another encouraging thing for me.  Take in mind that this is very much a rough draft.  After I finish the book I’ll be going back and fixing a lot of stuff that sucks or doesn’t make sense.  The fact that I was able to identify things I learned after writing just one chapter gives me more faith and confidence that things will continue to get better and that the revision process won’t be as humbling and terrible as I first imagined it would.  So here are the five things I learned that I’m going to take with me to keep making the book better and better.

1.  Setting a Scheduled Time to Write was a Great Idea

It was really hard for me to get back into writing after taking a couple years off after I got out of college.  It’s like lifting weights.  When you stop going to the gym for a while and suddenly decide one day that you’re going to get back in shape and start pumping iron again, you get super excited.  You’re getting back into something you really enjoy!  Then you go.  Then you go home, and you body feels like it’s been stretched out on a medieval torture rack.  You feel like garbage and wonder why you even bothered in the first place.

In college I wrote a lot of short stories.  Some for class, some just for myself.  It made it easy every time I took a new class to just jump right back in and start churning stories out.  Then real world stuff happened and other things that honestly are just excuses.  Bottom line is I stopped writing.  I would jot down ideas or even do some outlines for story ideas, but there was no actual writing going on.  When I would try to start a project, my writing muscles would hurt from not being used; I’d feel like I was wasting time and then stop the project.

The biggest thing I’ve done that has helped so far, is setting a schedule up for when to write on my days off.  Working 12-hour shifts, I made the decision to stick to writing when I’m off.  Anything I try to write after 12 hours in a bulletproof vest, 20-pound belt, and boots in summer heat wouldn’t be worth keeping anyway.  But for each of my days off I set aside a couple hours to be devoted to writing the book.  Then I made a nifty spreadsheet and printed it off so I would have to look at it each day off as a reminder.

An amazing thing happened then.  I sat down that first day and wrote.  Not very much, as you probably remember from a previous post, but I wrote.  The next day, I woke up, did some adult chores or something like that, then saw what time it was and sat down to write.  More words came out.  Work and training and being called in on days off took away a few writing days, but that’s something I knew would happen.  Then today, I woke up, watched some YouTube videos, then I noticed it was almost 10:30.  Time to write.  So I did.  More words came out and a chapter was completed.

There’s something magical about a spreadsheet telling you what you’re supposed to be doing.

2. I’m Really Digging this Discovery Writing Thing

I’ve mentioned before how my previous attempts at a big project have either died in the outlining stage or shortly after.  In my whole academic career I’ve been a huge proponent of outlining.  Well I fell into the same problem that a lot of writers who try outlining fall into.  When I finish the outline, I am bored with the story and feel like I’m done.

So I made the decision on this project to take more of a Discovery Writing approach.  For those unfamiliar with the term, it’s what you think of when you imagine a writer sitting down and just typing words that turn into wonderful stories.  Stephen King and Robert Jordan are very popular writers who use this method.  Other writers like Jim Butcher or Brandon Sanderson write these detailed outlines for their stories that provide a great framework for them to work off of.

Being a huge fan of both these writer’s and being an outliner in all my academic writings naturally led me to lean this way.  Well guess what?  It works great for them but not for me.  It was a little strange to think that my writing style possibly mirrors two writers whom I’m not a particularly big fan of and not two guys who I have a tendency to have silly fan boy moments over.

But it’s true.  I’ve had way more fun writing this chapter as a discovery writer than any other chapter I’ve attempted in other projects where I wrote a long detailed outline.

3. Naming Characters is Hard

I put some time into coming up with the name of my protagonist and a couple of side characters.  I thought of names that sounded natural, but also would stand out so the reader could easily remember them.  As I sit down and write along in the story, it becomes evident that there needs to be a new character here to accomplish a certain thing.  Coming up with cool names on the fly is really hard.

The solution is pretty simple though.  I just use my gut and come up with a potentially cool name, and remind myself that it is 100% okay to come back and change it later.

One of the harder parts about naming characters is keeping the names unique.  I’m not out to name every character after one of my friends, or come up with nasty villains for the sake of naming people I don’t like after them.  I want the names to be unique and not something someone can point at and say “Oh Sean named this person after his favorite character in a David Eddings book,” or “Oh this character is totally meant to be Sean’s boss.”  I want people to read it and think, “Whoa, Officer Baxter is kind of a bad ass,” and “I totally can’t blame Sergeant Andrade for wanting to punch the main character in the throat.” 

I want the readers to think about how much they like or hate the characters more than I want them thinking about where they got their names.

That being said…

4. Focus on Making the Characters Cool and Cool Names Can Come Later

As I previously mentioned, I can go back at anytime and change the names of characters.  So I have until the end of this book to come up with a super cool name.  If Sergeant Andrade later needs a cooler name, I just need to hit a couple keys and I can search and replace every Sergeant Andrade with Sergeant Väinämöinen.  Don’t worry.  I wont.  But I could if I needed to.

The important take away was just reminding myself to make the character cool and focus on that before wasting too much time on names.

5. Blogging About this was a Great Idea

This entire process has been very fun.  Writing the story has been fun.  Talking to friends about it has been fun.  Blogging about it has been fun.  Blogging about it being fun is fun.

It’s also been an interesting experience.  On my Blogger Dashboard I can see how many times different posts have been viewed.  My blog about actually getting the story started has gotten 82 views so far.  That still blows my mind.  Before that 40-something was the most viewed post I had, and even that was ridiculous to me.

I know I paste it all over Facebook when I put up a new post, but it’s a little humbling to see that people actually take the time to click the link and read this.  The feedback is always appreciated and the support of everyone reading provides another little boost to keep going.  

I guess that means you all are still stuck with me blowing up newsfeeds with blog posts for the foreseeable future.