How does it end??

What happens when I don't take my own advice

There is a common thread of thinking that when writing a first draft of a novel, you should write through to the end. Plenty of craft books and writing teachers will advise you not to double back, which can be very risky—we go back to clean up Just One Thing, which turns into two things or three things or twenty things. An unfinished first draft is basically a giant junk drawer, but in an unfinished kitchen. Does it make sense to spend months dealing with the rubber bands and expired coupons before putting a roof on the place?

If you tell me you’re writing a novel and there’s a big thing in the first half of the book that doesn’t make sense and you need to figure out, I will tell you to let it slide, keep moving forward, and go back to it after you’ve got the rough shape of the whole thing down.

Now I must confess to you I am not currently taking my own advice on this question.

I finished a rough cut of Act II before Christmas and as I spent the last days of the year not writing but thinking about writing, I felt dread as I thought of Act III. Act II was an effort to squeeze out. But Act III? I have no idea how this book ends. I don’t know where I’m headed. Sure, I could take my own advice and just start, well, making stuff up, till something sticks. But then another thought came into my head, and dang, it felt so good.

I picked my novel up in early January and went back to the beginning. To page one. A friend who’d read the rough cut of Act I pointed out the info dumping and exposition that bogged down the first scene. I started off the year slashing happily.

After that, I’ve mostly been looking and thinking. I’m tightening, yes, but also *really* trying to understand my characters deeply. To put together the pieces of their backstory and current actions to find a through line. If I know what happened back then and what they’re doing now, pretty soon I’ll be able to envision what they’ll do in the future.

I’ve been at it for a few weeks and haven’t gotten past the fourth scene, which is exactly why I’m glad to be doing what I’m doing. If you do NaNoWriMo or the 90 day novel, you’ll get quite used to writing like a criminal in a car chase, veering all over the place, throwing in whatever feels right in the moment. There’s no law against writing like this, but my problem has never been putting down words. It’s been making them make sense.

In this case, doubling back is what I need to do to find my way forward. Reminds me of another old writing chestnut: learn the rules so you can break them. The process you should follow is the one that works for you. Keep writing, friends.