Drafting Your Novel: Expanding from Within

Guest Post by Jack Smith

Robert Garner McBrearty, author of the Sherwood Anderson Foundation Fiction Prize for his collection Episode, recently shared a technique he’s been using to draft a novel.

Write the whole thing through, regardless of length, and then expand from within.

This is a great process idea.  Of course, prior to drafting, you do need a sense for your character and where you want to take this character.  But, assuming you have that, just shoot through the draft.  Don’t worry about all the scenes you might flesh out your novel with, all the secondary characters you might come up with, subplots, etc.  Just write through what appears to be the essential conflicts—the ones that tell your basic story. 

McBrearty has expanded his original version of 50 pages into a present version of close to 200.  He says: “The first writing, even though rough and skeletal, established a sense of voice and who the main characters were.  New scenes occurred to me and the skeletal scenes filled out with sensory detail and character interactions.  I know I have plenty of rewriting left to do, more development still to come, but I’ve got a good base to work from.  I’m confident I’ll finish; the novel won’t be abandoned.”

Keeping in mind McBrearty’s process idea, here’s another approach.  This one starts with a kernel idea: 

1. Write a one- two-sentence description of your proposed novel (the log line).

2. Expand this description to 300 words or so.

3. Write a novel from this, even if means 10 to 20 pages first draft.

4. Expand your novel from this short version.

5. Reread your novel.

6. Continue expanding.

7. You will probably need to rethink your initial description as you go.

Let’s say, though, that you’ve already written a full-length novel, or close to it, and you’re wondering whether you ought to keep everything—some material seems rather extraneous to your character’s overall arc.  It’s hard to cut!  But weed out what seems extraneous material.   Strip your novel down to its key developments—its basic structure.   Look again at the material you weeded out.  Can it fit somewhere?  Perhaps portions of it can.  Perhaps whole scenes you temporarily cut might, in fact, work after all—perhaps in a different place in the novel.  Or you might decide that some material you cut does, in fact, take the novel off course.  If so, eliminate the dross.  Finally, take your new, stripped-down draft and expand from within.  Seeing the bare bones of your work helps in creation but also in revision.

Jack Smith is author of the novel Hog to Hog, which won the George Garrett Fiction Prize (Texas Review Press. 2008), and is also the author of Write and Revise for Publication: A 6-Month Plan for Crafting an Exceptional Novel and Other Works of Fiction, published earlier this year by Writer’s Digest

Over the years, Smith’s short stories have appeared in North American Review, Night Train, Texas Review, and Southern Review, to name a few. He has also written some 20 articles for Novel & Short Story Writer’s Market, as well as a dozen or so pieces for The Writer. He has published reviews in numerous literary journals, including Ploughshares, Georgia Review, Missouri Review, Prairie Schooner, American Review, Mid-American Review, and the Iowa Review.

Robert Garner McBrearty’s fiction has been widely published, including in The Pushcart Prize, Missouri Review, Narrative Magazine, Mississippi Review, and New England Review.  He’s the author of three collections of short stories: A Night at the Y;  Episode, which was awarded the Sherwood Anderson Foundation Fiction Award; and most recently, Let the Birds Drink in Peace, published by Conundrum Press in 2011. He’s won fellowships to The MacDowell Colony and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA, and his short stories have frequently been performed at Stories on Stage in Denver and at the Texas Bound show at the Dallas Museum of Art.   

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