Things I learned from NovNov

The first draft is only the beginning...

Preamble…

My Kickstarter for Malcolm’s Midnight Snack Mysteries is almost 40% funded. Not exactly where I wanted to be at the halfway mark, but there’s still time left for you to help me reach this goal! It’s a concept short about a baby who runs a detective agency and I think it would make for a cute series for kids. Better than some of the weirdness my kids watch on YouTube. 😂

Well I did it!

I finished my first successful Novel November! If you’re wondering what I’m talking about, NovNov is a challenge where you write a first draft of a novel (or in my case, graphic novel) in one month. I’ve written in an earlier Substack post I wrote about how I modified the challenge to keep track of page count instead of word count, aiming for 6 pages per day. Some days I hit the count, some days were below and some were well above, and in the end I got about 130 pages of actual script before writing out the third act in paragraphs.

But Leisl, why did you switch from script pages to paragraphs? Is that cheating?

My opinion on this is that there is no “cheating” here. Especially if you’re customizing it for something other than a prose novel. You do what works for you and the story and this is where Lesson #1 comes in: The first draft is messy.

And that’s how it’s supposed to be. I’ve always been an incessant planner and I had a pretty solid outline of where I wanted the story to go, but something happened as the month went on. There came a point where I my imagination started working without effort and the characters were doing things I did not expect. I started *gasp* pantsing! (For those who don’t know, “pantsing” means writing without following a solid plan. As in, flying by the seat of your pants.)

It was actually pretty exhilarating, but I also felt like the tale was going out of control a little, so instead of wasting my time with script formatting, I decided to just write the story out and worry about the technicalities later. The result is messy af, but I have a draft! I can say it’s a thing now and that feels great!

I also realized as my brain was in “the Zone” Lesson #2: Your story might change. In ways you don’t expect! I knew I was writing a YA comedy. It still is a YA comedy, but I guess my inner self really wanted to write a mystery, and it was slowly turning into that as the story went on, so draft two will be learning how to strengthen that part of the tale (among other things).

That brings me to my next Lesson #3: Draft 1 is just the beginning. Remember Lesson 1? I have a lot of stuff to rework so I can make it the best it can be before I send it to anyone. It’s not where I want it to be yet, but I can confidently say I’ll get there, because draft 1 is DONE! 💪🏾

Here’s a concept sketch of my main characters I did a while ago. Enjoy!