Pre Write Your Novel

This week’s video I go over the most important thing you can do BEFORE you start writing your novel – before you even start outlining. If you want to be a planner, it’s important to get a good system in place to Pre Write Your Novel.

I’ll be honest, this is the area my process has evolved the most since I first started trying to write an epic fantasy in 2005.

How I did it Then

I still remember, the very first bit of free-writing I did on the back of a hand-out. We were flying back from the National Debate Tournament in Philly. I just scribbled RANDOM things. A couple characters, some doodles, a lamp-post? I still have that page too.

From there, I then spent an entire month just pre-writing this story. But the Pre Writing was not a smooth process. There wasn’t a system in place. What I ended up with was 39 pages that was very… unbalanced.

Did I talk about characters? Sure. I had a cast list. With a one sentence short tag of their name like “Harma Quisquol – A shamed Gritlerre trying to redeem himself.” (don’t ask – I was bad with names at the time). Nothing about their personality, or back story, or anything really.

Did I world-build? Not really. But there are several pages of intense calculations determining how far apart things must be given the average speed of a horse, and a way too detailed breakdown of the seasons that literally do not matter. I got so far as to start describing the organizational structure of the military – which, literally, was not used.

I didn’t balance the elements of the story. I didn’t flesh all of them out. I mostly was focused on getting my PLOT down, and it would absolutely bite me when I got to the end of the first draft, reread it, and went “Huh. Uhm. I don’t actually know how these characters ACT.”

Balance prewriting ALL your elements.

I was trying to pre-write, and that was a good thing. I didn’t try to prewrite the next several projects at all, and they completely imploded on me. This big epic fantasy actually DID get several completed drafts in. I wish I would have taken the lesson that prewriting does work for me, and just improved it instead of tossing it aside.

Find the elements that matter to your story.

Develop EACH of them.

Now as for HOW to develop them… that’s a different conversation for another week.