Two things amazed me about my writing progress last year: 1) that I was actually doing it; and 2) that I managed to write over four hundred pages without even the slightest hint of a plot. This is okay for forty pages or so, you know, just introducing the characters, setting, and what not. Maybe eighty if you’re particularly gifted with adjectives. Maybe even two hundred pages, if you have the luxury of forcing all your readers to enjoy your work at gunpoint. But never, ever four hundred pages.

Yes, yes, I realized I touched on all this in the last book update. Today I just want to dig into the whole concept a bit more.

Not every book actually needs a plot. Travel books, memoirs, dictionaries, — all of these have the ability to fill hundreds of pages without even the merest threat of a twist ending. However, unlike the other books I’ve written, this one is fiction. As I got to the point where I realized the book might never end, it dawned on me that I might not be the only one to notice the problem.

For one, books that never end are very expensive to print. But worse, books that never end are never read. And, like most writers, I’m definitely writing to be read. So what’s a struggling wannabe to do? Come up with a plot, of course.

Disclaimer: I’m not a complete idiot. I did know about this strange literary device called a plot before I started. And to be honest, I had one when I started. I wrote up an outline which looked okay when it was only seventeen lines. It wasn’t until I actually started writing, however, that I realized it was about as thin as butter scraped across too much bread. There was no way my piddly little idea could support the weight of an entire novel.

As I mentioned in the last post, I began work on a second book (or booklet). I worked on it for two days. It’s about ten thousand words long and told in the first person point of view. It fully fleshed out the backstory I needed to give the main story a sense of purpose. Once I had that, I officially abandoned the first draft and went back to the literary drawing board: the synopsis. (If you can’t tell a story in 500 words, you sure won’t do it in 500,000 words. Trust me.) This second pass of the synopsis is getting a lot closer to where I want to be. Still a ways to go, but closer (and in the right direction).

Even better — for you, that is — I may be ready to actually unveil some of this mystery when Update Three rolls around. Which means I’d better stop typing here and get back to the word processor.

I’m still surprised I made it as far as I did last year on the first draft of the manuscript. Back when I made my 2009 New Year Resolutions, I promised myself I’d finish the first draft by year’s end. And, back in January 2009, I actually thought that might happen. After all, I was already in my second month of writing and had a vast, expanse of time ahead of me. Twelve whole months! What couldn’t be done in twelve whole months?

Little did I know I’d be starting over during the year and wouldn’t begin writing again until August 1. Finishing a first draft by year’s end seemed mathematically impossible. NaNoWriMo helped me make up some serious time. By the end of the writing year (December 21) the draft hit 122,475 words. (I know that word counts can be a bit difficult to grasp: click here for a few reference points).

I didn’t begin writing again until January 5, when I added a whopping 159 words. The next day I did barely better, adding only 310 words. In short, things were getting pathetic: a far cry from NaNoWriMo days where my daily average was over 2,200 words. (And my most productive day was 7,453 words. Ahhhh, those were the days.)

The Heart of the Matter

The only thing more incredible than writing 122k words is writing 122k words without the slightest hint of a plot. About halfway through December, I changed the subtitle of the book to A Series of Uninteresting Events. The first draft was never intended to be close to a final anything. The characters are flat, which is okay. The imagery is weak; also okay. And I’ve held back on the frilly adjectives simply to make it through an entire story, which I could then go back and dress up later.

A particular someone I know is fond of making analogies to homebuilding. But there’s a good reason for that: building is a fundamental thing we humans do and building houses is easy for anyone to grasp. To use a homebuilding analogy for the book, think of my outline and synopsis as a blueprint. The first draft is the foundation and framing. At the end of this draft you have a pretty good idea of its shape, its purpose, and what the end product will look like. But it still needs drywall and paint and trim.

A solid frame without any paint and trim would be a terrible home. Similarly, a home with lots of nice paint and trim but a lousy foundation and frame would never be a place to live. A good book, like a good house, needs it all: it must be good through and through.

But when I wrote my 122,955th word on January sixth I realized the foundation and frame weren’t coming together. The book was more like a tunnel, aimlessly plowing into a mountain without any real purpose. I had to stop and rethink things. So I did something crazy over the weekend.

Something Crazy

What did I do? I started a second book. What? You heard me. And actually, it’s not as crazy as it sounds. What I began writing was a prequel, for lack of a better term. I realized that for the current story to come together I had a few too many unknowns to deal with. My synopsis simply didn’t have the detail I needed to explain what was happening. So I picked a character mentioned in the story, but not part of the story, and made him the first-person narrator in the prequel. In one day I wrote 34 pages, over 7,000 words, mapping out important pieces of the backstory in the detail I finally needed. It changed a lot: and in a good way. It was just what I needed.

It’s not done, of course, and I’ll likely never “finish” it. It’s simply an exercise. But a good one, and something I never saw coming. But in hindsight it makes sense. Because until I get down to the details, my brain just can’t properly formulate all the story elements. I have to create conversations and make people walk around. The bird’s eye view doesn’t work for me.

If all goes well, by the “Update Three” post my “Book Zero” will be behind me, my plot wall smashed down, and the first draft completed. If all goes really well, that will be long before December.