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5 Longform Writing Lessons I Finally Learned (And One I Still Haven't)
1. I want to write, but this part is just so boring, I can't even force myself through it to get to the next good part.
Maybe....don't write it if it's that boring?
If even you are bored, think how bored the reader will be! You probably don't need the boring bit anyway. Write something exciting there instead. Or write a one-line summary of what happened and then skip to the good part.
2. I want to write, but I don't know how to write the transition from this part to the next part.
Maybe... don't write it if all you want to do is get to the next part?
You don't have to write a smooth, complete ending and beginning to every bit. That's what double line spaces and rows of stars and chapter breaks are for. Or "And [x] [time] later" at the beginning of the next paragraph.
3. I want to write, but I don't know what comes next, only what comes after that.
Maybe... don't write it if you don't know what happens?
What happens next clearly isn't vital to the story, if you don't know but you know what happens after that. Skip to the part you do know, or write a one-line summary and move on. And if it does turn out that what happened is important later, you can always do it as a flashback or edit it in.
4. I want to write, but there's something in the next paragraph that I need research for, and I can't find the answer anywhere.
Maybe... don't write it if you can't find the answer?
If ten minutes with Google skill doesn't get an answer, chances are most of your readers won't know either. Long research jags are for a) fun or for b) things that will have a large effect on the piece overall, not for one line of description. Leave it out. Or if the POV really should know the answer, come up with a reason why they don't, and that's characterization/worldbuilding/plothook. Or make up the answer, and if it later turns out to be completely wrong, that's characterization/worldbuilding/plothook too.
5. I want to write, but this particular part is going nowhere and everything I write seems wrong.
Maybe... don't write it if it seems wrong?
This is often your writer brain telling you that you're writing the wrong thing. Go back to where it started feeling wrong, get rid of everything after that, and come up with something completely different you could write there instead. Or write a one-line summary to close it off, and move on to something else.
X. I want to write this, but it's a new project and it's going to be long and I have a lot going already and I should focus on those, and I don't think I'm ready to start it anyway
Maybe... don't write it if SCREW YOU I WRITE WHAT I WANT IF I CAN'T START THIS I'M NOT WRITING ANYTHING EVER AGAIN SO THERE
Maybe....don't write it if it's that boring?
If even you are bored, think how bored the reader will be! You probably don't need the boring bit anyway. Write something exciting there instead. Or write a one-line summary of what happened and then skip to the good part.
2. I want to write, but I don't know how to write the transition from this part to the next part.
Maybe... don't write it if all you want to do is get to the next part?
You don't have to write a smooth, complete ending and beginning to every bit. That's what double line spaces and rows of stars and chapter breaks are for. Or "And [x] [time] later" at the beginning of the next paragraph.
3. I want to write, but I don't know what comes next, only what comes after that.
Maybe... don't write it if you don't know what happens?
What happens next clearly isn't vital to the story, if you don't know but you know what happens after that. Skip to the part you do know, or write a one-line summary and move on. And if it does turn out that what happened is important later, you can always do it as a flashback or edit it in.
4. I want to write, but there's something in the next paragraph that I need research for, and I can't find the answer anywhere.
Maybe... don't write it if you can't find the answer?
If ten minutes with Google skill doesn't get an answer, chances are most of your readers won't know either. Long research jags are for a) fun or for b) things that will have a large effect on the piece overall, not for one line of description. Leave it out. Or if the POV really should know the answer, come up with a reason why they don't, and that's characterization/worldbuilding/plothook. Or make up the answer, and if it later turns out to be completely wrong, that's characterization/worldbuilding/plothook too.
5. I want to write, but this particular part is going nowhere and everything I write seems wrong.
Maybe... don't write it if it seems wrong?
This is often your writer brain telling you that you're writing the wrong thing. Go back to where it started feeling wrong, get rid of everything after that, and come up with something completely different you could write there instead. Or write a one-line summary to close it off, and move on to something else.
X. I want to write this, but it's a new project and it's going to be long and I have a lot going already and I should focus on those, and I don't think I'm ready to start it anyway
Maybe... don't write it if SCREW YOU I WRITE WHAT I WANT IF I CAN'T START THIS I'M NOT WRITING ANYTHING EVER AGAIN SO THERE
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(I have no rules. I have learned not to even say I have rules, because the last time I thought I had my own Process and Set Of Rules down, it seemed like this existed to challenge the universe to drop a project on me that shattered all of them. Because that's the kind of shit the universe reserves for me. XD)
Because like, for me:
1. Literally some of the parts that bored me to death to write have been expressed as someone else's favourite/most engaging part to read, where conversely even I have had to concede that a bit I loved to death WRITING and that engrossed me for hours . . . .is, on a whole-structure-of-story side, a distraction and not necessary at all.
2. Sometimes this works out, but sometimes it's actually a case of #3, where the reason I don't know how to make the transition is because it's not just "a transition", but something actually happened in there that needs exploring. And then other times even if it is purely a transition issue, if I don't get the shape and flow of the transition right, I can't figure out where to insert INTO the next bit, and if I try to "just get on with writing it" I will do the verbal equivalent of crashing and burning.
3. Often what I don't know about how the next part goes is absolutely essential to being able to write any of the next part I basically know how it goes. Not always! Sometimes this is good advice, or at least temporarily good advice, but often the problem I'm facing is, in fact, "and then somehow they end up on the same side" (or "and then something happens and EVERYONE IS AT EACH OTHER'S THROATS"), and while I sort of know pretty well what RESULTS from the next bit after that, I can't actually write it without knowing what happened to make the big change.
Usually when I don't know what happens next, in fact, it's because I'm already trying to skip a bunch of stuff that Had To Happen before the bit that Has To Happen before the bit where I know what happens. This sort of thing is why I had an outline for YBEB that definitely had everything sorted out within 10K words and then the universe laughed hysterically at me.
4. This . . . does not work for me, at all. But then I actually have huge pet peeves about authors getting wrong stuff that I know (it's jarring as HELL); and also, for me, just because it's a one-line thing doesn't actually make it non-important.
And this is why I once spent roughly an hour and a half determining who would have been mayor in NYC during the Battle of New York, and also researching his policy and action history in order to determine whether I thought it was reasonably plausible that he would totally fail to bother waiting for state or federal approval before telling Canada and the world "yes I would LOVE your aid in rebuilding as fast as humanly possible, let's do a photo-op!" (final determination: absolutely, and then do a vehement editorial on why this shouldn't even be in question and how he is Disappointed, DISAPPOINTED in blah blah blah blah).
My reward was an NYC reader going AHAHAHA OH GOD, YES, I AM JUST GOING TO STOP AND IMAGINE HIS REACTION TO BEING CHIDED ABOUT THAT. Which felt good. So I'll take it. XD
5. This one is the rare one that is totally correct! . . . just that, so often, the reason it's wrong and feels wrong is that I tried one of the techniques above. IRONICALLY.
X. HILARIOUSLY I HAVE MORE OR LESS GOT THIS ONE BEAT, at least for my standards of "beat". (You want to jump the queue, Idea, you give me solid confidence that I can write AT LEAST three-quarters of the novel out of you once I start, a coherent setting, plot and set of dynamics, and name your genre. Otherwise while I'm happy to play with you in Internal TV type ways, or babble in windows, you are BACK OF THE LINE for actually getting serious attention.)
This ascertains that at least if someone wants to blow my other work away for a while, I GET SOMETHING OUT OF IT. XD
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If you're already writing long-form things on the regular, you have probably already solved most of these problems to the point you don't even notice when you sail past them, so you only run up against them when it's already hard mode.
"Maybe... you shouldn't write it?" is definitely just step one - if that doesn't work, then yeah, I probably do need to figure out what I need to put there, and do it. But 90% of the time, for me, it's that I didn't need to actually write it. You probably aren't even hitting that 90% of the time because you already know going in that you don't need that part.
I also think you're skipping ahead a lot more than me, though - probably it's because you outline more; I'm more "I have a vague idea of the next two or three dominoes that fall, and if I'm lucky I know how it ends." So the stuff I am skipping is more likely to be "I did not need to write the entire subway ride in detail" or "I do not need to go up to the "goodbyes" on every single phone call."
The research part is tough! Because I do really like getting things right, and putting in little bonuses for people who know, and also I really like research. I mean, the reason my Star Wars fic has gone nowhere lately is that I decided that yes, I really did need to learn to read Chinese before I wrote any more of it, and that's okay.
And if I put in ten minutes and I'm starting to get interesting answers, I'll keep going. But if all I want to do is write the next sentence so I can move on, and I've spent ten minutes trying to research it and got *nowhere*, usually the better choice is to fudge it for now to keep writing, I don't actually *need* the exact range of a certain extinct frog to continue the story. (I have had too many times where I spent two days trying to solve one line and the answer is "Actually nobody knows, would you like to do some doctoral-level research before you finish your story?")
(I have also had about as many times where someone has gone "that little detail you put in made my day!" as times where somebody has gone "that little detail was totally inaccurate, gotcha" even though I did the research both times. I mean, it's gratifying in a different way to dump half-a-dozen jstor citations on them to prove I'm right, but in terms of reader satisfaction, it's often a wash. And it's just as gratifying to say "Actually, there's a characterization reason they got that wrong," and a lot less work.)
But yeah the last one is probably the biggest key to being able to successfully write long, and alas I am not there yet.
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When I started writing, all my IDEAS were long-form, but what would happen was:
1. GET IDEA. LOVE IDEA.
2. Write beginning of idea.
3. . . . get frustrated (don't know what's next, don't know how to transition, am bored, etc.)
4. Write The Good Bit/Next Good Bit.
5. Be satisfied.
6. Lose all impetus or drive to write this story ever again, despite intellectual desire to see it flower. Possibly polish beginning and Good Bit until they glow.
7. Rinse.
8. Repeat.
I mean I've always had the problem where an IDEA that I thought would be small and self-contained would then balloon into six novels and a movie (so to speak), but up until relatively recently my ability to follow that through was SUPER limited.
And in fact outlining is a very new thing that I'm playing with in various ways because previous to abouuuut 2014 for me, outline = this story will end a stillbirth, abandoned out of boredom and frustration, never to be touched again. I have actually kept a couple ancient WordPerfect/Word documents of stories where exactly that happened, as a kind of nostalgic artifact.
From about 2003-2010 honestly the only way I could finish a long form story is if I roped it onto NaNo or a NaNo-like Push and Started At The Beginning, Wrote Until I Came To The End, Then Stopped. No skipping ahead, no skipping transitions, no NOTHING: it could be a crappy pastede on yaye transition, it could be a BADLY written boring part, but I had to write it, because if I didn't, I would stall forever and the project would die stillborn.
I used to joke that my DRAFT is my outline. XD Because of course in a NaNo style dash you end up with a SHITLOAD you have to go back and edit in various ways! Including going "oh my god there are twelve subway rides here described in painful detail what was I thinking" or "goddamn these phone-calls are REALLY REPETITIVE." Or also " . . . whoops I introduced this character in chapter three and they sort of . . . disappeared. Huh."
But I still had to do it that way, or the whole thing would just . . . . die.
Without Accident was the VERY FIRST long-ish (11K? Ish?) story I ever wrote being able to piece the bits together out of order and fill in gaps instead of having to start at the beginning and go to the end, and I think it only worked because I was much more focused on breaking my total frozen-brain block on writing explicit sex, so I would literally sit and let myself write whatever sex I thought I could get into words and then put them together afterwards. But frankly with that one my brain was like " . . . how about we write three hundred words of bridging narrative instead BECAUSE WRITING SEX MAKES US VERY UNCOMFORTABLE AND ANXIOUS?!" so my problem was literally forcing it to give me the fucking words for "the good bits". e.e
After that I toyed with outlines and made a few experiments with them, and they sort of worked for 10K-ish "this is what I want out of this, I know precisely" type pieces like "Of The Fruit", but them working hugely relied on the things I'd learned while I was doing the "you must start at the beginning and go from there" version - because after having done that for a few NaNos worth, I did know that I could make myself Get Out a transition or a bridging scene or whatever, and had also taught myself to be fine with writing over 20K, realizing it was wrong, and then throwing it away.
I actually had to figure out how to put my ass in my chair and write the boring bits rather than the Epic Climax Scenes that played in my head, and it turned out the way I managed that was by saying "no you cannot HAS the Epic Climax Scene until you actually get there, no *smacks hands*". Which worked ok for me.
(I know other people it's poison for, mind! I am the LAST person to say "this worked for me, so it's how to do it". That's just the sequence I had.)
I've also only JUST started to get to the point where I am allowed to even think about editing as I go: the other reason I turned to NaNo-style writing binges is because when I started out, left to my own devices I was 10000% that kid who would polish the first half of the first chapter to a gleam, endlessly, and never get anywhere. I had to force myself to think of it like a live performance (once you've done a thing, it's done, you can't go back and fix it, the only way you're allowed to do that is just cutting it all out and throwing it away and starting again from that point) in order to JUST KEEP GOING.
YBEB is actually one of the shockingly few cases in my life where not only did the IDEA bloom out into way bigger, but I was also able to put all the rest of the shit I managed to build up over fifteen, sixteen years together and keep putting WORDS to it. And it's definitely the first time I've been able to sustain bits of out-of-order-but-related writing this long. So it's like . . . a manifestation of a tendency I always had? but the first time this translated into Actual Words On Page, in this method.
But it's sort of also why I managed point X: this is now the standard. XD If an idea wants to actually take over my ACTIVE WRITING TIME from planned projects, it's gotta show up with that level of commitment, that level of follow thru, that level of EMOTIONAL DRIVE, and if not, pfeh. It can wait until I feel like calling its number, which will depend on all kinds of things.
Ironically in the meantime depression has made it so that I'm usually not capable of the kind of sustained NaNo level dashes that used to be the only way I could write (the original novel for YBEB itself is kind of an exception, but it had a very particular intense emotional drive); I get tired and drop everything else in my life and then peter out on the writing, too. I CAN now do things like skip ahead, technically, but it's usually not the best plan, still: usually if I'm stalled out in exactly that way the better route for me is "okay WHY are we stalled" because the answer will actually tell me what to do. (And sometimes the answer is "this isn't actually boring as such but I'm hideously bored with it so I need to do something else for a while". Brains.)
So yeah. That's part of why it's always interesting to me. :) And I do tend to almost always be SOMEWHAT to one side of anyone's set of rules.
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I'm now looking at my current long (or long-for-me) WIPs and here's what they're like:
1. PWP concept blew out to an expected 50k; I started writing then somewhere around the 5k mark I said "oh shit" and realised I needed to actually outline. Now I have most of the "what happens in what order" roughed out, but I'm not sure I'm clear on the emotional arcs, so I'm a bit terrified of the whole thing. Suspect I need to come up with some sort of thing that sits alongside the what-happens outline that helps me keep the emotional stuff in mind as I write.
2. Canon divergence AU where I started out with a vague concept and wrote 5k words, then realised those 5k would all be thrown away because the actual story needs to have a thriller plot, not the fish-out-of-water dramedy that I started writing. Glad i realised this only 5k in. Am hoping to complete this for a big bang later this year, so I'm probably going to outline a LOT. Also, it's set in another time period so I'm doing a lot of up-front research (I need to know about daily life, world politics, and queer politics for that era so there is a lot of research), but I'm hoping not to get too bogged down in detail once i start writing.
3. I promised someone a short little ficlet arising out of their beta comments on another fic, and it's blown out to 5k so far with no end in sight - estimating 15k minimum. Also it turned into an angst-fest. I have no idea how to deal with this. I have a rough outline but I have a feeling that each thing on the outline is going to unfold into a fractal mess of feels. I am just starting at the start then forging ahead and seeing how it unfolds. I am terrified that it might end up so terrible that I can never post it.
4. It's not a super long fic but it's an order of magnitude more than intended... I asked for comment prompts and one of them really grabbed me and now looks like being around 10k posted in the comments (I'm planning to clean up for ao3 later, but never mind that for now). For this one, I am writing it one comment at a time, usually around 500-700 words, in the DW comment form, and once it's up and someone's commented on it there's no backtracking. I'm not drafting anything ahead, and barely thinking ahead more than a couple of chunks. This is VERY ODD for me, but it's been interesting to see how it goes with no outline and no jumping ahead at all.
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