Dear readers, it’s guestpost-time! If you visit my blog more frequently you may have read my review on The Trials of the Core by Michael E. Thies, the first book in the Guardian of the Core series. And you may have seen the literary mixtape on the book Mike and I compiled together. Today it’s time for me to give up my writing spot on the blog to Mike, so he can tell you all about his process of novel writing. Plus there’s a giveaway of his first book at the end! I hope you enjoy reading this and be sure to leave us a comment.
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Alright, so who here has a favorite author? I’m sure we all do. Who here knows of authors (perhaps even their favorites) taking a LONG time in publishing one book to the next book? Let’s look at some examples of this first: Brisingr (the third book in Christopher Paolini’s Eragon books) and Inheritance (the fourth book) was a span of 3 years 2008 to 2011. Another great example is George Martin, let’s look at his 5 books in his A Song of Ice and Fire series:
- Book #1: A Game of Thrones (1996)
- Book #2: A Clash of Kings (1998)
- Book #3: A Storm of Swords (2000)
- Book #4: A Feast for Crows (2005)
- Book #5: A Dance with Dragons (2011)
There is a serious gap in time between Book #3 and #4 and another gap between #4 and #5. Who wouldn’t get annoyed by this as a reader? And it’s okay to admit it, we get greedy, we want what is next now! And there is nothing wrong with that, but remember you would rather wait for something great than read something mediocre and those George Martin books are very complex. But, anyways, I really want to make the promise to readers of my series, Guardian of the Core, that you will never have to wait more than two years (latest three years) for the next book in my series because I feel as though I have a great method for writing my novels. Let’s expand on this.
Okay, so my first novel, The Trials of the Core, that just came out in December 2013 has taken me six years to write. That is a long time, but now that I have a grasp on the characters and the world and am not so busy in my life I feel as though I can speed this process along quite a bit. I have the second book in my series, still to be titled, slated for release in 2015. How do I do this? Well, here is my process of writing, and I find this process works really really well. At least, I like it quite a bit.
Step #1: Write that nasty first draft
- Do whatever you need to do to get those thoughts out on paper. I find that freewriting by hand first, and then transferring them over to the computer really works well because I get less distracted that way. But it also takes A LOT longer.
Step #2: Rest — sort of
- Do not, whatever you do, go back immediately through the document and try to correct it. You’ll do a horrible job. Your eyes need a month or so to rest from this book. What should you do during that time? Rest, of course. But, also, start plotting chapter-by-chapter for the second book in your series. Get at least the big ideas that you want to happen (any deaths, any character developments, any relationship happenings, and, of course, where you want that second novel to end).
Step #3: Rewrite (2)
- However long step 2 takes you is fine, because now when you go back to your manuscript of draft 1, you’ll have a clear idea of what to look for. If you have a character die in book #2, perhaps allude to it in book #1 or start setting up that main conflict. If you have a character fall in love, make an allusion to it in book #1. The character archs that you are going to have for your novel develop through MULTIPLE books, it is not simply a one-and-done sort of deal. When you have an idea of where you want your second book to go, you’ll know what to add in the first book to strengthen it up as a pillar for that second book.
Step #4: Beta-Readers
- I love this phase. You should have a decent manuscript by this point, but nothing that I would publish yet. Get a group of close writing buddies that you trust, or friends that you trust (not your mom and dad) to read your book. You need to get big structure ideas from them. Where is the plot falling short? Where are characters falling short? How is the pacing? Did you enjoy the novel or should I quit now? I would allow 2 – 3 months for this because they are doing this on their good will. A ploy I use in order to get my friends to read it is I take them out to dinner wherever they want to go once they finish the beta-read and then I sit down with them and interview them about the book.
- Now, during this phase, don’t just do nothing again. This is where you want to have a complete flow-chart for book #2. Plot it out chapter by chapter. You’ll be surprised how much easier this should be once you already have an idea of what you want to happen and when you got done strengthening the first book. Make sure this is done before the next step!
Step #5: Rewrite again (3)
- Okay, so now that you have gathered your friends’ opinions, it is time for you to go back to the pad and rewrite. Use their advice, or don’t use it, you are the author and it’s ultimately your decision. You are the creative genius behind everything, and you’ll have to learn how to sort good advice from bad advice. Take your time in this step, it’s important as you are almost done! It should only take around 2 months though. I try to revise one to two chapters a day at this point.
Step #6: Professional Editor Time
- After step #4, I would recommend getting a professional editor ready to give you comments on your book. Trust me, your friends are not professionals, not even close (unless you do have a friend who is a professional editor lol). But, your friends will help you craft your prose just enough so that you don’t get scoffed at by the editor and they can focus on larger structural issues and character development and don’t really need to worry about all the little things that hopefully your beta-readers picked up on and you corrected. I had a developmental editor for the first book and it helped TREMENDOUSLY. Seriously, invest in it. My professional editor took a month and a half to edit my book though.
- So, what should you do during this time? Start writing that second book. I always try to strive for one chapter per day since it’s a lot harder to create chapters than to revise chapters. If you do one chapter per day you should have around 45 chapters done of your second book by the time your professional editor finishes it. That is a really good head start on your series!
Step #7: Rewrite (4)
- Okay, now you and your professional editor are going to have a serious talk about the pros and cons of your novel and you need to take this talk seriously. This is one of the final chances you have at correcting any huge things that happen within the novel. Take a look at structure and plot it out if you need to. I know when I finished I put every chapter on notecards and different colored notecards for each different perspective in my book and then started rearranging them in an order I could follow and that would compliment the book.
- During this rewrite you should already have some of your second novel written and if stuff that happens in the second novel that you weren’t expecting, what better time than to prelude that in the first book. Now you have a better grasp of your world and of your characters. In crafting your second book, you are only going to have a better first book.
- Because I wanted to get it to a copy-editor within a certain time-frame I finished this phase within a month but I was also revising 2-3 chapters per day! It literally was like a job for me, that is all I did during the month of June. It was rather depressing lol. If you don’t have that much time on your hands because you actually have 9-5 jobs, just try to push out one or two per day. Steady persistence is key here.
Step #8: Copy-edits
- Alright, so you invested in a developmental editor to address the large issues of your novel. And now, you fixed those large issues (hopefully anyways). Now it is time to refine that search into the nitty-gritty. Yes, I’m talking about everything grammar wise. You cannot simply have friends do this for you, you cannot have your first editor do this for you, you need a copy-editor. They have different skill sets than what a developmental editor would have.
- This will take anywhere from 1 – 2 months.
Step #9: Write and Pre-Market
- Okay, so you should continue writing your second novel if you haven’t finished it already while this book is at the editors. But, more importantly, you should begin marketing your book and setting up a definite concrete marketing plan if you haven’t done so already. Plan out how you plan on getting reviews. Plan how many books you are going to buy. Plan out your book launch. Just plan!
- If you haven’t found a place that can typeset for you yet, do so IMMEDIATELY!!!
Step #10: Typesetting
- Once it is done at the copy-editors you will give it to your typesetter. They will have it for a couple of weeks to a month depending on how long the book is.
- During this time continue marketing and writing your first draft in that second novel. Tell your friends about your soon-to-be published book.
Step #11: Revise, once more! (5)
- Okay, so from the copy-editing stage, to the typesetting phase, things get messed up. TRUST ME. You will really need to scan your book with a fine-tooth comb because there is no going back now. This is so crucial. A member of a writing group that I’m a part of didn’t do this and it made reading his book unbearable. Heck, I even did this, and had six different rounds of editing done on it and there will STILL mistakes in my book. Now, is this normal, yes. Don’t fret it, you are bound to miss something, just don’t miss a lot of somethings. For example, my book is 124,000 words and I know of 4 errors in it so far. That’s a very insignificant number when you think about the grand scheme of things.
Step #12: Finalize Your Book
- Okay, it’s done. You finished your last edits. Do you feel good? I hope so, there is literally no going back now. Now you are going to have to wait a couple of weeks to a month for the books to finally come in. During this time do more marketing stuff and if you haven’t finished that first draft of your book, finish it!
- The idea here folks is to have a first draft of novel #2 (or novel #3 if you’re working on novel #2) by the end of this process. By doing so, you will already have such a huge advantage in making this second book and will be able to get the gears rolling with this one as well. Now all you have to do is take some time and relax, don’t do anything, even work ahead on that novel. For the next couple months you will be getting the publicity of the book out there. But the most important publicity is that second book, so only spend a couple of months on this and give yourself a nice rest, too. Once you do this, then go and repeat the process for book #2. Depending on how busy you are, and I guess how long your books are, you should have another novel done within a year to two years after you have already published that first one.
This is the process that I utilize. Honestly, I love it. When people ask me what I have for the second book, I reply “Oh, it’s already done, it just needs to be edited.” And that blows many peoples’ minds. Now of course this model is going to depend on the length and complexity of your book, but the most important thing that you can do is take editing your book in baby-steps. Just manage to do one to two chapters a day and you’ll be fine! By using this method, I really do not think I will ever have a book that takes me longer than three years at most (once I actually get a full-time job) to finish. I don’t know why authors take so long to complete some books, but I want to make a vow to my readers that they will never need to wait that long for me.
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Giveaway
Are there any writers among us? I hope you enjoyed reading this guestpost and that you found it of any use. We’re really curious what you think of how a novel writing process should be. Moreso, here’s another tip for writers-to-be. What’s a better way to promote your novel than to give away one for free? So that’s what we’re going to do. You can win one paperback signed copy of The Trials of the Core by Michael E. Thies. All you have to do is fill in your entries in the Rafflecopter form here. This giveaway will end on May 8th. The winner will receive an email.
Filed under: Giveaways, Guestposts, Writers
