I have always enjoyed writing in the past and have always felt that I have a story in me to tell. Hell, I believe everyone's got one. I've tried coming up with stories before which seemed very promising at first, but never actually went through with them realizing they were just ideas filled with plotholes that lacked a solid foundation. In the past month, my itch to write a novel has struck again, and I've gone back to the "drawing board" to come up with a new story to write. This has been the furthest I've come in an attempt to write a novel. After weeks of messing around switching up plot ideas, constructing the story outline, coming up with characters, and really trying to figure out what exactly it is I want to write about... I've been slapped back to reality. It's never crossed my mind before, but how do I actually transform this idea into 200+ pages of goodness. I want to do it so bad, yet the idea of trying to actually write a novel just overhelms me... How did you guys do it with you first story? Any advice or suggestions?
First attempt: planned out the main points of the action, then what would happen in each chapter, wrote the first few chapters - agonising over making each absolutely perfect as I went. Got frustrated after five months, three chapters (lovely, brilliant chapters), and then gave up because I found the whole process so tedious that way. Second attempt (completely different story): planned my characters, the situation/world and had a vague idea where I wanted the story to go. Found a starting point and just wrote how I felt my characters would behave in that situation and interacting with each other. Two months just character building / world building / researching. Then wrote 74000 words (in 12 months) of drivel with some good moments. Then rewrote the entire thing start to finish to work out the worst problems and have something with a fairly compelling narrative (three years, but there was a two year gap in the middle of that!! About 69000 words - a couple of scenes added/extended but a lot of material cut). Now editing, editing, editing to come up with something fluid and (hopefully) attractive to readers and publishers. Then editing again. I'm hoping to have it ready for submission within 3 months. Incidentally, my first draft of the current work WAS riddled with plotholes and other problems. It didn't really matter - that's what rewrites and editing are for.
Same way I've done all of my stories: I come up with an opening sentence & start typing. My first story, I kept typing & didn't stop until I had more than 120,000 words. I'm now working on paring out all the fluff & awkward over-articulation. When I get stuck, I leave that bit and jump forward to the next idea. My writing can be a little chaotic, jumping back to insert scenes I didn't think of before, or patching stuff because I've decided to change something in the setting.
How do you transform the idea into a novel? You start writing. Don't think of the big picture, of all the stuff you need to do, of all the things that will probably happen, or you'll find yourself overwhelmed and paralyzed with fear. Start with the first page, the first sentence. Write it. Then the second page. Then the second chapter. Keep going and give yourself room to make mistakes or change something you might not like or add in something you do like even if it might not make a lot of sense to the story yet. Accept that your first draft isn't going to be perfect and that's okay. Once you realize that what you write down doesn't have to be permanent and you can erase and/or change something whenever you like, you'll be able to breathe easier.
This is the ultimate test to prove if you love writing or if you just love the idea of being a writer. The difference between these two people is that one wakes up in the morning everyday and writes. Its all a matter of motivation and confidence and just doing it. You'll never find any advice on here where something will suddenly click in your head and you'll be in writing mode all the time. Its a personal struggle where you have to trust and devote yourself.
A lot of good words here that will make you feel "normal". All I can is just write. Open up Word or whatever you have, Google docs whatever and write. It will be riddled with mistakes and what seems great today will be crap tomorrow - just keep writing! Any idiot can write, its the editing that will sort it out, edit re-edit and re-re-edit and you'll end up where you want to be. Just go with it - the logest journey starts with one small step. My own experience - had a rush of blood to head and wrote 7 chapers, 25,000 words and got bored shitless, left it for a year and came back but got nowhere. I thought I was great, printed out what I had and gave it to my friends. They skirted the issue when I asked them about it. One friend told me he didn't really like it, when he got drunk he said it was crap. So i left it another year. On a twenty hour drive from the North of France to the Southern tip of Spain I came up with the ending of the story, the twists and turns then totally re-wrote the original chapters turning those 25,000 words into 60,000 completely changing the mechanichs of the writing and now my friend loves it, he even facebooks me about the next chapter. All I can say is write and write and write, take a break and go back to it and you'll learn on the job. Good luck!
