Novel Writing Brainstorming Forum

Gaiman, I think, is who you mean Storm. At least, I know in interviews on podcasts he has admitted to calling his agent in the middle of writing a book (like almost every book) lamenting over how bad it is. I'm pretty sure he mentions it at least on one of the episodes he has been featured on in I Should Be Writing but it might have been in the Adventures in Sci-Fi/Fantasy publishing one.

Another one to consider in the spirit NaNoWriMo is John Green. He is a published YA author who did a youtube video about the even and how he was going to attempt it. This is from 2009 and he's pretty goofy. He has a couple of great points in it though. "There is no such thing as a good novel written in a month, as a rule." And that no first draft is good either when it comes to most people's writing. In fact, he also mentions that some of the greatest things people loved about his novels were things that came out in rewrite. He's funny, so if you have a moment here is the link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCTO91aBFXk


And I agree. The first draft is going to be horrible. Mine for example is one big telling mess. It is all telling and almost no showing, I am serious. And it's going to be over 120k of that but the thing of this is... that is okay! It's okay to suck on the first rough draft. My prince could randomly start crossdressing, the secondary characters could all switch roles and the villain could drink a magic potion and change into a cat! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8fA3xp_TMk) and that would be okay. Because maybe I needed this first write to see I had the characters in the wrong place or maybe I've seen Emperor's New Groove too much and just miss my cats, but it can all be fixed.

But let's talk about you. Okay, so what if the girl is the main villain after all. Maybe the boyfriend guy starts off seeming all bad and tough but he's just a front man because it's really the female who is in control. Like those movies where they defeat one bad guy, think they can rest but then oh no, stuff happens again because who they thought was a bad guy was just a minion or a mini-bad guy... or something like that.

Maybe the one who went off on a pointless mission does that too often, make that his fault. Have one of the other characters point it out. He could be like those kids(or adults) who play online multi-player action games where the real missions they can earn lots of points but also those are more risk so they go off on the mini quests that gain less point each time but are easy so they do it over and over to work their way up. It could be like, "where is Ted, we need Ted. "Oh, he went off on so and so mission." "What? That's so pointless. He is never here when we need him." And later have him show up and just be like "what, i was doing sumthing" and such. Just an idea off the top of my head.

You can either try to get the novel to go how you want from this point or you can use the changes you've made and try to meld the rest into something. It won't have the same ending you planned, but a quick half hour outline session then back to writing could get you going again towards a new ending.

All of this is part of the learning process. Ever wonder why it takes most writers more than one book before they get anywhere? (Yes, many writers don't sell their first written novel, some don't sell the first five.) But in the end, when you listen to them talk about those post novels you will find that they didn't mind writing it, because for them the trunked novel wasn't a waste of time. Even if it's one they declare they are keeping under lock and key in a drawer to maybe burn the dresser late so that the book never sees the light of day, they will say that the experience of writing it was worth the effort.

Not sure, but I hope we have all helped in some way. Good luck!