How to Get to The End of Your Novel (Not Just 50K)

Every year, we’re lucky to have great sponsors for our nonprofit events. Dabble, a 2020 NaNoWriMo sponsor, gives you everything you need: manuscript, story notes, plotting, goals, drag-and-drop, auto-focus, auto NaNoWriMo word count submission, syncing between all devices (including mobile), and more. Today, they’ve teamed up with KJ Dell’Antonia from the #AmWriting podcast to bring you some tips on finishing your story:

I adore Nanowrimo. Tell me it’s impossible to write a whole novel in a month, especially a month with Thanksgiving in it, and I will set out to prove you wrong. My first novel, The Chicken Sisters (out 12/1 from Putnam) started as a NaNo project, and I’m hoping to be able to say that about my third as well. 

That said, I know myself. My first novel clocks in at around 107K, my current WIP draft is at 99K. I favor long, convoluted sentences. I like to express things in sets of three—reasons the character is reacting as she is, emotions that are bombarding her, the ways her body responds—or even five: lists, smells, tastes, memories, expressions. And, as I have just demonstrated, I tend to use a lot of punctuation while I’m doing it. 

I do this from the very beginning. If I’m writing a scene, I write a whole scene. The people move, they eat, they smell and taste and feel, they think about their backstory: the whole shebang. Historically, that’s meant two things. First, when November 30 rolls around, I’ll have 50,000 words—but I’ll only have a draft of about half of my story.

Second, I’ll have put in a lot of time writing those long sentences and elaborate scenes. The terrible truth about my first drafts is that the writing tends to be pretty good. The dialogue flows, the action moves, there’s humor and pathos and feeling in the way the characters interact with one another.

It’s the story that usually sucks. 

Getting to The End, not The Middle

I suspect that to some extent it will always be this way for me. I plot, then I write, then I discover that the plot doesn’t create room to bring the character to the place where she needs to be and I have to go back and do it all over again. But I also suspect I could do that initial finding my way to a character arc and plot that weave together in a way that satisfies the whole a lot more efficiently if I just wrote fewer words. 

Make a Plan, and Try Dabble

To do that, I need a plan that forces me out of my usual loquacious style, and here it is: I divide my 30 days and 50,000 words into a beginning (6 days, 10K) , a middle (18 days, 30K) and an end (6 days and 10K again). I use Dabble Writing Software to lay out the plot lines as they develop and try to maximize the number of things every scene advances—and I set it to count every word, not just the ones in the manuscript! World-building and character riffing are fine as long as I stick to the schedule.  

Write Some, Pre-write Some or Just Say What Happens

Next, I pay attention to time and word count. If I’m lingering and I need to move along, I throw down some plans and some prewriting. Conversation about the Halloween event here. Town history TK.  Some prescient line that recurs at end.

So that’s my weird NaNoWriMo 2020 plan: write fewer words, but get more of the whole picture on the page, with the goal of finding my way to “the end” instead of “the middle”. I know (and you know) that it won’t really be the end. There will be much, much work ahead—but I’ll have a draft. It will be a terrible draft, as it should be, but it will help me do the work I find hardest: not writing the scenes but finding the story. If I’m lucky I’ll be putting flesh on the bones; if I’m not, I’ll be rebuilding a scaffolding, not taking down a whole house. 

KJ Dell’Antonia is the co-host of the #AmWriting podcast , a weekly show offering actionable advice on craft, productivity and creativity for writers in all genres. Her debut novel, The Chicken Sisters , will be out from G.P. Putnam’s Sons December 1, 2020. Follow her NaNoWriMo progress on Instagram: @kjda and find more at kjdellantonia.com .

Top photo by Anton Shuvalov on Unsplash.