After all the blood, sweat, and tears; after writing your novel. You are now ready for smooth sailing.
Nope! Unless you are both lucky and talented — much more than me, you bastard! — you are going to suffer the trials and tribulations of life after the first draft.
After dumping all your ideas onto paper without worrying about the consequences are over, this is the part where you attempt to make it all make sense. Even if you think you were perfectly coherent while writing the first draft, I can assure you… as I assure myself every time, that what is written in the first attempt is almost laughable.
At some point, you will have to return to the draft but take a break first. You’ve just emptied your brain of all your ideas, now it’s time to let it settle. Relax. After you finish writing your first draft, take a break. Thus returning to it with a fresh new perspective.
What should I cut from my novel? We all want the answer to that question to be nothing. The novel is perfect. Publish it and earn your spot on the New York Times best sellers list. Oh, our delusions. That simply isn’t the case. When we write, often times, we are trying to get all the words down on the paper. What we don’t often see when we are churning away is that some of the characters, subplots, and scenes are unfocused and doesn’t serve the over-arching plot. When we reread and edit, we must do so with a critical eye, take a step back from the prose itself and ask: does all this connect? Even if the writing is fantastic, if it doesn’t serve the plot, it might have to be eliminated. Many authors have said it, so I might as well say it again: Kill your darlings.
Kill your darlings does not mean cutting the parts of the story you love the most, but rather, making the edits that are best for the story, not your ego. Yes, we all want to keep that delightful character that we skillfully crafted or relish in that scene where an epic action sequence occurred, however, if those elements aren’t serving the greater good: the story, then it is best to remove them.
Game plan:
My prologue was not a darling, it was an information dump. I have an idea to make it a more encapsulating scene, and I tend to do so after I finish reading through the novel. If I approach it correctly, I will be able to tie the prologue to the actual storyline of a plot. Yes, that is the plan.
Sometimes, in order to tell the most effective story, your audience needs to have a bit more information than what the plot can supply.
A prologue can do that. A prologue can add a bit of historical detail, usually to introduce an antagonist of some sort through a particular circumstance.
In the first book of the Song of Ice and Fire series, The Game of Thrones, we are introduced, very subtly to the White Walkers as a few members from the Night’s Watch has an unsettling encounter with them.
Or there is The Lord of the Rings, where the Ring and Sauron are introduced.
Prologues are not exclusives to introducing antagonist. They can offer any details your story needs but are unable to fit within the actual plot itself. The term “unable” is a tricky one as with any type of finesse, and if the detail is truly vital, you can surely include the information in the plot without having a prologue.
In the end, a prologue is a decision of an author. If used correctly, it can be an effective first jab at hooking the audience. Done poorly, it can be wasted energy slowing down the velocity of your story.
I believe if you so desire to write a prologue, go for it, but afterward, evaluate whether you are simply dumping information onto a page or you are telling an exciting extension of your story and that these detail given at the beginning will be connected later on.
If the detail doesn’t link up, then in the second draft, you might have to cut the prologue. Or, rewrite it so it can do that.
The prologue I wrote for my novel at this time is an idea dump. It’s exposition. I needed it to frame the world I’m going to be creating, but now that I look upon it, I know there is much to be improved on.
The last message sent digitally was to let everyone beyond the border know that there was still hope. The slicing of the cyber thread caused all historical records to vanish. Everything men once knew was forgotten, buried by the erosion of time.
Nature hid humanity’s errors. Towers that once pierced the sky were now rubbles and broken stones. Sprouting forests healed lands that have been scarred by highway concrete. Dams broke, bridges collapsed, and everything else that men had made was surmounted by earth, until all remnants of prior existence were lost.
Yet springing from the ashes came life in the familiar forms. Millenniums passed, and there living without knowledge, upon the land that their ancestors had forfeited were new civilizations. Townships, unions, and districts built so far apart, that societies were forced into isolation. Those that lived were simple folks, concerned only with the matters of survival. Yet life was still hidden in a shroud of darkness and mystery. But those who did not understand did not complain, however, those that did, could only stand terrified as they faced the uncertainty.
What are your thoughts on prologues? Do you use them in your writing? I’d love to hear about it.
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There are two types of writers, there are those who take time before they start writing to outline their work, and then there are those that just get right to it.
For the longest time, I thought I was in the latter camp. I would start writing and then, through the majesty of imagination, my story will end up exactly where I intended it to end up.
That was rarely the case, most often I meander from scene to scene without a clear focus, guiding myself to an often unsatisfying climaxing and a lackluster conclusion.
In my more youthful years, I had all the free time in the world to write. I would pull all-nighters just for fun. Yes, fun! I would write all day long. That luxury is so far in the past that it now feels like someone else’s life. I don’t have a whole day to write anymore and the idea of staying up all night for fun is laughable.
As a content writer, it is important that my time is used wisely in the office. I have only a certain amount of time to produce a piece of content worthy of being published. It is not a creative feat, but it is an exercise in efficiency.
If you know what you are doing at the very early stages, if you know where you are going, you can start mapping out your day a bit better. An outline is an essential piece in accomplishing that. I can’t imagine writing a blog post without some sort of outline (albeit, I did not outline this one), and now, I can’t imagine doing the same for a novel with multiple parts.
I have so many abandoned, half written pieces of work from short stories to novel length manuscripts. I blame my haste to write and my neglect to outline for those unfinished works.
So here is to a new me, going forward, I am most certainly going to outline my work, especially one as epic. I give myself the permission to diverge from the outline should I see fit, but in order to keep myself on schedule and focused on the job at hand, I need to be organized.
Start with the outline or at least have a clear direction. If I did, I might have written my second or third book in the series by now. Or… I might not have started the first one at all. It’s hard to look back and say, but going forward, this is what I’ll do first. Outline.
Check out my YouTube channel for more on my novel writing journey.
“When technology fell, the catastrophe threatened human existence.”
That is the first sentence of my epic trilogy. It won’t be forever, but it has been for a while now. It’s not great. There are many areas to improve.
But during the first draft, I wanted to simply get my idea on paper. The first sentence, if I over thought it, could have caused me to hesitate enough that I wouldn’t even start. In the beginning, I wouldn’t worry about the quality of the first sentence, I simply needed to start.
However, during the editing phase that is where I can go back, look at the first sentence and ask myself: is this a good first impression for my readers?
In this episode of The Other Epic Story Vlog, I took a look at the first line writing resources and examples from classic and contemporary works. Then I returned to my attempt at a first sentence and gave it my best crack.
I wanted to dig deeper. The words like “technology,” “catastrophe,” and “threatened” in my mind, were all weak, vague words. The kind of words a writer chooses to use when he or she is just kicking off. It’s a tell, not show sentence. I could do better.
“The last message sent digitally was to let everyone beyond the border know that there was still hope.”
This above is my updated first sentence. It encapsulates the same idea. The fallout of technology and the realization of our dependency upon it. I feel it has a bit more umph!
There are many sentences in a novel, but if my work is ever to be a classic, attention to the first one is important. So there it is… now onto the next one.
Around six years ago, I started working on a novel. I was inspired by epics such as The Song of Ice and Fire, The Dark Towers, and The Lord of the Rings.
I knew it would be difficult, but the first draft came to me very easy. However, I didn’t have a conclusion. Thus, I decided that this story would be a part of a larger work — a trilogy. Young and naive, I set off on this journey and was immediately stopped by what I will now refer to as reality.
School, work, and life all together put this epic story on the shelf. I knew, as the way my life was unfolding, I might never take it up again. It would be an unfinished work. A great life regret. I have a knack for not finishing work, and I hate myself for it.
Most recently, I started working for Wondershare Filmora, producing content for YouTubers. It is a world that I absolutely relish being a part of. And so, not wanting to only observe from the perimeter, I’m participating.
I have attempted a few YouTube projects in the past. Most notably my attempt at a cocktail/beer channel, It’s Not a Problem Yet and my cult (amongst my friends) magic series, Mind Flirt. I have learned from those two projects that creating video content is a lot of work, especially when you are not an expert and require expensive resources (ie cocktail ingredients, magic skills).
So here is my new YouTube/novel project, entitled The Other Epic Story Vlog. While the fear of me abandoning this project, as I have done with so many before, is crossing my mind. I feel I may have finally found two projects that align. I can work on my epic novel and create videos about it at the same time.
This will be an interesting learning experience as I dive back into old work and venture beyond. The Other Epic Story Vlog will be interactive. I will learn about writing techniques and try to apply them on camera. Watching someone write is not always fun, in fact, it’s quite agonizing, but I feel like I am onto something here. I feel like this might be a pretty brilliant idea.
Elliot Chan 