My writing process

As I discussed in my last post, I was very much a 'plotter' for Relentless Blades. Does this mean I'll always be a plotter? I can't say for sure, but it seemed to work well for me. I referred to my world bible and outline numerous times throughout the writing process.

I finished my world bible at the end of September 2022. I started officially writing Relentless Blades in the beginning of October 2022. I have a full-time job, am married and have two children. Thus, I went with the old saying, 'if you write one-page a day, in a year you'll have a novel' and gave myself a deadline of October 1, 2023 to complete Relentless Blades. To my absolute surprise, I finished the 122,500-word first draft at the end of January 2023, eight full months ahead of schedule.

For me, having the world bible and outline really helped keep me focused and on task. The thought of writing a novel was daunting, so to keep myself from becoming overwhelmed, I viewed each chapter like writing a short story. Writing a 10–15-page short story didn't seem nearly as scary. I'd think about what I wanted to accomplish with each chapter to push the narrative forward, then write the chapter like a story and I knew the chapter was complete when I accomplished what my goal was for that chapter. 

I chose to follow the Jerry Jenkins philosophy of writing. His philosophy is to set your writing time and then write without editing or fear. Your goal is to get words on paper and keep writing. Don't judge your writing and don't worry about whether its 'good' or not. He then says to start the next day's session by editing what you wrote the day before. This is when you put on your critical hat and clean up any mess you made the day before. Once you've done that, use the rest of your time to write the next section, unfiltered. Rinse and repeat. Now, I didn't follow this exactly, but fairly close, and it worked well for me.

I know this can be a bit controversial, as many writers will tell you not to edit at all until you've finished the manuscript. To them, I say if it works for you, fantastic! That's the beauty of writing, each author has their own style that works well for them. To go back to the weight loss analogy, I used in an earlier post, there are a thousand different diets and most of them will work to lose weight. The key is to pick the one that works for you, and more importantly, that you can stick with. It's the same with writing. There are plenty of great authors who don't outline. There are plenty of great authors who do outline. There are authors who only edit at the end, and there are others that edit as they go. There is no right or wrong way to write, there is only the way that is right for you.

Once I completed the first draft, I waited a few days and dove into my first cover to cover edit. But Russell, I thought you edited as you went? I did, but that doesn't mean a full edit is not necessary. This can also be controversial as many authors will tell you to set your finished manuscript aside for a month or more to let it breath and then go back to it with fresh eyes.

I can see merit to this line of reasoning, but I'm the type of person who needs to keep momentum going and if I set the story aside for a month or more, I might not get back to it. Again, each of us has to find what works best for us. I think I cut about 7,000 words in the first full edit pass. One of the things I focused on were 'weak' words. What's a weak word? They are words that don't add value to a sentence and can often weaken it. Here are some examples: Suddenly, very/really, start/started, just, somewhat/slightly, somehow, seem/seems, definitely, saw, heard, that, adverbs ending in 'ly'. It's not to say you can't ever use these words, just to be careful how often you use them, and in what context. 

I made several more edit passes based on feedback from my wife and sister, who both read the story. It was my fifth edit pass (version 6) where I made the most dramatic edits and entirely rearranged my opening six chapters and made major cuts that reduced the novel down to 105,000 words. This is the version I'm currently on. I like the state the story is in, but I know it still needs some tightening up. 

Ideally, I'd like to get the word count slightly under 100,000. Research indicates that most novels are between 70,000 - 90,000 words, with variances according to genre. Fantasy tends to allow for slightly longer works, usually in the 90,0000 - 120,000-word range. This is most applicable if an author wants to be traditionally published. However, it also applies to self-publishing in the sense that most publishing costs are calculated by the word, so the more words, the higher your cost to publish. It seems traditional publishers are more comfortable with works under 100,000 words, particularly for unknown authors. 

As an aside, 'word count' was foreign to me until I started writing my novel and researching the art of writing. I think it's foreign to most readers. I always used to judge a book by how thick it was and how many pages it had.

When I first started writing Relentless Blades, and I'd update my sister on my progress, I'd say something like, "I'm excited, I just hit the 20,000-word mark." 

She'd respond with, "great, how many pages is that?"

To which, I'd reply, "I have no idea."  It's true, I didn't. Now whenever I look at a book, I wonder how many words it has.