From Idea to Novel

The very first step in creating an excellent novel is first not caring what anyone thinks. It is opening the doors inside you to a room that is all your own, like a little stage at the bottom of rows of theater seats. You take your seat on the second row and start ordering the stage about like you’re the director and everything is going to be exactly as you say it is. You want a character that looks like this. Perhaps you want a set that looks like that. Change the lighting, play the music, bring the mood.

It’s subjective. No one can tell you it’s wrong. That’s why it’s creative writing. That’s why it’s supposed to be fun.

However, there is no limit to how many people will say that it is wrong. The moment you say you have an idea in progress that hasn’t been laced in the cement of a paperback cover, there is always someone who wants your work to be theirs. They want to make it over, change the scene, change the voice, and take what you have written to make it theirs.

This is the perfect time to practice telling whoever wants in on your party to back off… and back off with a lot of Fs. You need to protect yourself and your story. I’m going to give you three reasons why it’s better not to tell anyone your idea for a story until you are finished. AKA: You have done all you can do.

1. An underdeveloped idea. It’s a mistake to think that any random idea you have for a book is going to be a good idea for you to execute. For every book I write, there’s a stack of unusable ideas to go with it. If you share an underdeveloped idea with an enraptured crowd who loves it, you could be signing up for a world of heartache. The best writing project for us may not be the one that makes the people in our lives chant our names in unison. If it’s an unworkable concept that doesn’t come easily to us, it may convince us that we aren’t a good enough writer and encourage us to quit. Not to mention how little fun it might be for our friends and family to be disparaging to the work we were able to complete. I have experienced this. “Oh, I wish you worked on blankity blank blank instead. I was so interested in that.”

2. An idea in progress. It’s also terrible when you’re working on a premise/concept that is similar to something someone else you know is working on. What if they started working on their story after you and you feel like they were a copycat because you told them all about your book? What if it ends up being a competition between you and your other author buddies? I’ve had this problem most acutely with a book of mine called ‘Kiss of Tragedy’. It is a reimagining of the Hades/Persephone myth and that is a very popular concept for a novel. Even Margaret Atwood has written one. The only way to get through your idea is to put blinders on, work on your idea until you are UTTERLY finished, and then set it free. That way, it won’t bother you who else is working on something similar. You said what you wanted to say on that subject and now you are finished. Let whoever write whatever they want. Even if books share similar concepts, they won’t be the same. You have nothing to fear.

3. A well developed idea. An author is in a very vulnerable place when their piece is at around 97% complete. There are various places throughout the writing process when the author is vulnerable. A few such times are when they’ve almost finished the first draft, almost finished the final draft, and almost finished concept editing, but nothing is as bad as when they’re almost finished everything. Talking to the wrong person could make a hardworking author feel like they should throw the whole thing out. My sister calls it throwing out the baby with the bathwater, which makes me shudder, but she’s right. You can’t let someone convince you that you made an unalterable mistake. Tell no one. Just finish.

I wrote my first novel when I was 13. I didn’t have high expectations for myself because I was 13. I also knew that my writing was too awful for anyone to do anything other than read a few paragraphs and then throw it at me and yell, ‘Write better!’ So, I went through my manuscript myself and made a list of what I had done wrong that I would like to do better. The item at the top of my list was that my character continuity was poor. I needed to practice keeping a character in character instead of letting them do all sorts of wild things that threw off the flow of the story. That book was a wreck, but the process of figuring out what was wrong with it by myself without outside input was invaluable. I continue to do it.

The experience of coming to an understanding about what needs to be fixed in your manuscript yourself instead of relying on the expertise (or opinions) of others will give you a completely different feeling when it’s time to say goodbye to your book. You won’t feel bullied. You will feel like you had the chance to speak. The last thing you want is for someone else’s voice to be played on the stage of your heart.

Control the stage yourself.