Can I share a little writing secret with you? Despite the fact that I’ve had four novels published, every time I start a new novel manuscript, I find myself wrestling with the plot. To help keep my novels moving forward and stop myself from struggling to keep the thread of ideas, I’m going to let you in on a few tips that work for me when drafting a manuscript. This, for me, is especially important given that I’m currently working on two novel drafts. I’m up to around 6000 words on novel WIP#7 and 4000 words on novel WIP#8.
Use a chapter plan
I keep a notebook with a rough outline of each chapter, in little more than a few sentences. Lately I’ve also taken to keeping an e-chapter plan at the beginning of a draft, using the chapter heading formatting to make it easy to refer back to specific chapters as I go along.
Keep a list of character names
I tend to do this in a notebook, making it easy to use find and replace if I change my mind later.
Use find and replace for changes
As above, let find and replace become your friend! What I always do is check afterwards to make sure all changes are saved.
Skim read your back chapters to work through writer’s block
It helps to get the whole story back in your head again, in order to keep going forwards when you’re stuck.
Don’t necessarily trust that auto-save is doing its job
I manually save work, both online and locally on my desktop. I sometimes email a draft to myself too. Better to have too many copies than only one – which could be vulnerable to getting lost. Lots of backups is best for your book baby.
Put dates on drafts
This helps to make sure you are uploading your most recent revision. How awful would it be to accidentally publish an older version, with all its typos, by mistake? (Cue shudders).
Anything else?
Nope, that’s that. What do you think? If you have any other tips during the writing process, please feel free to share.
Leilanie Stewart 