Lesson 6 The Final Act! Hacking the First Draft
This is it. The final step and then it's a GO.
Mapping out your story.
Now that you know your story’s plot, which is really fleshing out the premise, you can put it in order.
This is where you can also plan your word count. For my stories, I try to get at least 60,000 words for YA. No more than 80,000. (When I do epic I reach for 100,000 but I never get there in the first draft. That takes revisions).
I average 2,000 – 3,000 words per chapter give or take. So if I have 30 chapters at 2,000 words each I have my count. If you are doing NaNoWriMo your count is 50,000 to finish so that’s somewhere between 20 – 25 chapters.
Now make a list of 20 – 25 events that need to take place in your story.
Include a chapter for introducing the character and the world in some way. Include an ‘inciting incident’ that sparks the action. You can divide up your chapters into 3 acts if you like doing it that way.
5 chapters for the beginning: Act I. 10 for the middle, Act II and 5 for the end, Act III
YOU MUST NAME YOUR CHAPTERS!
Naming your chapters will help you write a synopsis. It will be a guide for you if you need to go back and add or delete or rearrange. Do not just number your chapters. This is imperative!
Now on to getting those events moving forward.
Act I Introduce the world, characters, relationships, and inciting incidents.
Chapters 1 – 5
Act II Send your MC on a journey into the darkness.
Make things harder and harder for them. If you’re writing a mystery, build up suspense. If a fantasy, show some action. Throw in a subplot with some of your supporting characters. Have the story revolve around your premise. Toward somewhere in the 8th or 9th chapter things blow up out of proportion.
Chapters 6 - 16
Act III is the climax and then the resolution. Make sure you resolve all your subplots too.
Chapters 17 -Â 22 or 25
EXERCISE:
Now for each chapter make a headline as if in a newspaper. Number these.
Example: Chapter 1: Josey goes to the circus
           Chapter 2 : Josey meets Mary and learns about her being sent away to Timbuctoo.
           Chapter 3: Josey, devastated, goes to the beach and considers diving into the water.
Chapter 4: Along comes Mildred to distract him and make false promises
And so on.... all the way to your last chapter.
When you have the events that lead your character from point A to point B, his personality, his trauma, his relationship with the antagonist, more trauma, his revelation, the final confrontation, and then the resolution all mapped out, go to a word document or whatever software you use, and put each one of these headings on a separate page. You can number them now but keep the headings. Make a page break in between them.
Once that is done, go back to the first one and explain in a short summary (I usually italicize them so I remember to go back and delete them) about what should be in that scene. Develop it. Each chapter should also have a beginning, middle, and end and a conflict that builds and leads into the next one.
When you’re finished summarizing your chapters, go over them again and check for continuity. You’ll probably have to have a number of conversations and actions in each chapter to get your word count to 2,000 or 3,000 so detail it as much as possible. The more detailed the summary, the easier it is to write the chapter.
When this is finished, you're ready to write your draft. You’ll be surprised as to how quickly and fluently it will take shape.
There is plenty of room to improvise and change things as you go. Your characters will take a life of their own now. Be spontaneous. If things change, remember you're the one writing the story. You can adjust. If you do, just make notes in future or previous chapters of your changes.
Have fun!!!
You'll be surprised now how quickly your story will take shape. After the draft is finished you can go back in and develop subplots, twists, and whatever your story needs but you'll have that foundation to build on.
Let me know if you use this method and how it turns out for you!