How to NEVER Finish Writing Your Novel | Novel Writing Advice

wait why does this look funny here we go did you know that the people who never finish a novel can be grouped into four neat categories neither did I so here we go normally on this channel I produce videos that are meant to help you finish a novel today I'm talking about some of the ways that you can get stuck on the path to finishing a novel I've grouped them into four different types or categories of writers who have trouble finishing a novel all for different reasons these writers get stuck at different parts of the process and for different reasons which we will discuss up first type number one is the dreamers if you ask the general public you'd probably find that something like 90% of them have thought about writing a novel or some other kind of story at some time I don't know if that's actually what the number would be I'm completely making up these statistics but I'm guessing the percentage of people who have at least thought about writing a novel is quite high and this is where most people get stuck they come up with a great idea or an idea that they think is great they might sit and wonder let their mind wander they imagine all sorts of things the ending the beginning what their main character looks like but they never actually sit down to write the novel now dreaming is important no creative Endeavor gets done without some amount of internal Naval gazing the problem Creeps in when that Naval gazing prevents you from actually getting any worse work done at a certain point you need to just stop thinking about your novel and start writing it now most people get stuck here because their desire to actually write a novel is not that high it's just kind of a fleeting idea that they've had they have no intention no desire really to actually put in the work involved in seeing a project like a novel through however if you're serious about being a writer then you need to get past the dreaming stage you need to actually sit down and come up with a plan for how to bring your idea to fruition of course type number two of writers who will never finish their novel The planner SL outliner hang on I'm still figuring out exactly what I'm going to say the planner has progressed positively on their potential project but still isn't writing the actual book they find themselves bogged down in outlining or in research or in plotting they're still figuring out what pen they want to use or what font they want to set the scrier app to does scrier even have different fonts I don't know if that's a thing they have 4 million Wikipedia tabs open and they're still trying to figure out how to make chapter 6 more interesting now there's nothing wrong with outlining or coming up with a plan before you actually start writing your novel research is also very important you want to make sure that what you're portraying in your novel is factually accurate but at a certain point the planning outlining and research needs to end and you need to start writing you are not going to be able to head off every potential problem that you're going to encounter when you're writing you're always going to be going into a new project with a certain degree of uncertainty and no amount of planning is going to make you entirely certain about the project all of this work is really just motion it gives you a sense that you're getting work done when in reality you're not actually really doing it anything assuming that you're planning excessively just like with the dreamers the problem is not the planning and outlining itself but too much planning and outlining planning and outlining are helpful to your project up to a certain point but if you go too far with it it starts to become detrimental there are plenty of writers who plan and outline their stories before writing they also write their stories something that's tricky for type number three type number three the procrastinator can I just talk about this one some people dwell on the past procrastinators tend to dwell on the future because after all that's when they're going to do the bulk of their writing but as you've no doubt realized by this point tomorrow never comes it's a construct that never actually arrives that sounds kind of ominous and dramatic but it's just the reality so if you're waiting for tomorrow to start writing your novel you're going to be waiting for for a while and probably watching a lot of Tik Tok procrastinators are held up by doing the actual work sitting down and starting to write they're different from the planners that we talked about before because the planners are theoretically at least making it look like they're doing work procrastinators spend their time doing things other than working on their project getting out of this can be a little tricky habits can help if you write consistently at a certain time of day or at specific points during the week and you get used to doing that it will make it a little bit easier to overcome the procrastination but ultimately it really comes down to just gritting your teeth and getting the work done remember that progress will help to motivate you a lot of people wait for motivation to come before they take action when in reality it's often the action that creates the motivation getting work done creates a sort of positive feedback loop in the more you do the more you'll want to do until the project is done this won't happen overnight it can take some time before you build up the habits and get used to doing the work but if you press through the first few difficult days will eventually get easier of course it's possible to take this getting stuff done a little too far finally this brings us to type number four the reviser what's interesting to me about these four different types is that they get stuck at different parts of the writing process and for different reasons dreamers never get to the point where they actually start their book planners get stuck in the planning phase procrastinators just do other things besides writing the reviser though is perhaps the most tragic of the four because to be a reviser you need to have finished a draft or often several drafts of your novel while the other three types are stuck at actually either starting or finishing their novel The reviser is stuck at the point that comes after the novel is finished their problem is not having a completed book their problem is what comes after that a reviser never takes the next step after completing and revising a draft they never move on to critique Partners or beta readers or publishing these types of writers are far more comfortable with the act of writing but have massive anxiety around sharing their writing now there's nothing wrong with that you can write just for your own enjoyment and keep your stories completely with yourself that's totally fine there is an intrinsic benefit to just finishing a novel yourself however I do think it's a shame if you spend all of this time getting your ideas down on paper and you never share that with the world novels can have an incredibly positive impact on the world and the people who read them this is particularly sad for the revisor because to get to this point you need to have overcome a lot of the challenges that creep up when you're trying to complete a novel someone who's a reviser has gotten past the dreaming stage they've worked through the planning stage they've overcome their procrastination they've gotten further than 99% of people ever will they've put a lot of work into their project their skills have likely Advanced far beyond the beginner stage and they could be sitting on a really great novel that they just can't take the next step to share and really I don't blame them because putting your work out there is one of the most vulnerable and nerve-wracking things you can do whether it's trying to get it published or have someone else critique it it's a really emotionally daunting task to have somebody else read something that you've put so much effort into if you find yourself to be a reviser where you have a novel that has been through five maybe six drafts and you've been reluctant to share it with critique Partners or to seek out representation then there's a few things you can do first I think starting with somebody you trust to be the first other person to read your work is a good first step they will probably be a little bit more understanding than just some Rando who's reviewing your work on the internet and they'll certainly be kinder than anybody in the publishing industry likely once you start getting your work being read by other people you'll slowly gain some confidence and a little bit more resilience in absorbing critique of your work you'll stop relying on external validation and start to see yourself as a talented writer that doesn't mean that you can't take constructive outside critique and figure out ways to apply it and use it to improve your work that's a different thing but you will be able to go out and seek out that critique so that you can improve even more as a writer because after all critiques from other people are probably the thing that's going to improve your writing the most just like I hope this video improved your writing so there you have it I hope you enjoyed this video and found the advice in it useful if you want to see more stuff like this you can subscribe to my channel and check out my all my other videos thanks for watching and I'll see you next time

Channel: Duncanosis

Views: 5,567

Keywords:

Id: k8YXCFPYUds

Length: 9min 58sec (598 seconds)

Published: Fri May 17 2024