Day 15
30 mins planning + 1 hr planned writing
Today we look at how to find a sense of direction within an “organic” writing practice such as these 30 Days. The 30 Days is an organic method because the draft novel is not pre-planned or pre-researched; we are making it up as we go along (fairly blindly when it comes to free-writing).
I’ve always found that I had enough to write 1,000 words each time, but I have struggled with feeling directionless overall. However, I am happy to put my trust in someone else’s practice, as i) this blog is about trying various things and ii) I have struggled with perfectionism and trying to get it “right” rather than getting it “done”. And although I am not clear about the storyline, I do feel pieces of the puzzle emerging as I work on small areas. And perhaps the final storyline will be more solid for having been worked up in stages.
But it is a relief for Jacqui to talk about the importance of setting an intention for each writing session. Her focus here is about having a direction for the scene. Direction creates a scene with purpose; a purposeful scene is a readable scene.
If a story is pre-planned, we will know what needs to go into a scene. If it is organically written, we only need to focus on one thing per scene. It can always be edited later to incorporate other storylines. The advantage of doing it this way is that it begins life uncluttered.
Exercise
- 1,000 words (I added the usual 30 mins planning): The focus today is on a scene with direction, events, pace. I referred back to the scene questions Jacqui introduced in Day 5 (https://alexasasse.com/jacqui-lofthouse/day-5-what-limits-do-you-set-upon-yourself/)
My response
- I chose the prompt about a character seeing someone from their past on the bus. The encounter was from another character’s perspective, and it gave rise to a nice ambiguity about whether the character-with-the-past is telling the truth or not. [spoiler: she’s not]
- I am really happy to find that 1,000 words doesn’t feel like a big deal to me now — I can bash them out quite easily, with a bit of effort.
- It seems that Jacqui is gradually moving us from unstructured writing to a more regular routine in Part II.
all course content copyright Jacqui Lofthouse thewritingcoach.co.uk