Thoughts On Writing A Novel Seriously

Shelton Bumgarner

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

One thing I did not expect is even if things are going well with your first-time novel, it’s still a lot of work. The reason is, I may be zooming through the first draft, but there are times when I have to pause for a few hours — at least — to figure out how to keep things spicy.

You’re supposed to have “a surprise on every page” and as such you can find yourself in need of a boost of creativity. For me, it’s watching movies. Watching movies is a great way to distract myself for a few hours. While I’m distracted, I often come up with solutions to issues with the novel.

For instance, I went to see the most recent IT movie and had a major “ah-ha!” moment when a character was introduced on screen. Now I find myself in a similar situation and I’m going to use some time watching the latest John Wick movie in hopes of fleshing out the period of time covered right before the novel’s mid-point.

Once I get to the mid-point, the tempo of the novel is set to change rather noticeably. Things are going to go a lot faster. My “all is lost” moment at the end of the second act is pretty cool. It’s delicious and covers a lot of really interesting macro issues in a very short amount of time.

But it will definitely be interesting to see how many notebooks I fill up with notes when I finally find myself writing the second draft. Once the second draft is done, I’ll show it to a few beta readers. Then I’ll write a third draft.

The first draft I probably won’t actually write — that will be the draft I hand over to some sort of editor to make my gibberish actual English. I’m hoping to pitch the novel to publishing houses no later than, say, August 2020.

Author: Shelton Bumgarner

I am the Editor & Publisher of The Trumplandia Report

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