2k to 10k: Writing Faster, Writing Better, and Writing More of What You Love

Every character in a book, even the most minor, needs a motivation. They have to want something. This is where agency comes from, because characters who want things are the ones who push the story to get them.

But, by putting this very little down, I have laid a basic framework and can now see the holes I’ll need to fill in before any actual writing can begin.

Specifically, I ask that my scenes do three things: Advance the story Reveal new information Pull the reader forward

there's no such thing as an unfixable plot.

I often print my map out and highlight the scenes in different color markers to denote what plot lines they touch—love story scenes, main plot scenes, secondary plot scenes, etc. This lets me see how my book is put together in a new and cheerfully colored way that can clearly illustrate problems that might otherwise be hard to pin down. For example

You can absolutely make yourself sick of your world before you've even started writing, if you're not careful.

Now, instead of treating bad writing days as random, unavoidable disasters to be weathered, like thunderstorms, I started treating them as red flags.

don't bother with details and I don't force myself to write past the initial flash of interest.

I'm not doing detailed character sheets yet. I'm just getting down the basics: names, motivations, and the general sense I have of them as a character.