Filling in the gaps

In order to teach myself dictation, I decided to work on a brand-new project.

So far it’s going well — it’s a nice palate-cleanser between edits for All Hell and I’ve decided it should be a novella, so it doesn’t feel daunting in length.

I think I mentioned last time that the dictation-and-iNotes combination is allowing me to leap around and write the scenes that most grab me in the moment. That’s one of my favourite things about first drafts, actually, that fun part of thinking “oh, this could be a cool scene” and just… writing it. Yes! It’s brilliant.

It’s especially brilliant when it’s going well. When the words seem to pour out of you, whether by dictation, or scribbling notes on the back of receipts, or typing in the most traditional sense. That’s where I’ve been for the past couple of weeks, and it’s a great feeling.

However, this can’t go on forever, can it? At some point, I’ve got to stop blabbing all my cool ideas, and I’ve got to fill in the gaps. Make sure the story has a cohesion, a narrative structure.

I’ll tell you what, I always thought I was a plotter through and through, but dictation has absolutely opened up my pantsing instincts — so there were plenty of gaps.

So this week, I’ve been mostly organising the scenes I’ve currently got into some semblance of order, and identifying where the gaps are. I’ve basically made a running list of what I want/need to add (in the Notes app, naturally) and then I’ve been working through them as and when I’ve had the urge.

It’s nice to have the list, because I like to daydream my way through a scene for a while, noodling it around while I’m folding laundry or whatever, and then I feel ready to dictate or type it out. And I think I’m getting somewhere!

So, again, I’m finding that my process is a bit of both, a bit of dictation and a bit of thumb-tapping into my phone, but it doesn’t really matter, because it seems to be working, so I’m not knocking it as a process.

I suspect this book will end up at about 50-60k words (like I said, more novella than novel), and I’m going to stop tinkering with it as soon as I have a cohesive first draft, in which the plot seems to make sense. If I can achieve that, I will take it as evidence that this process works — and I’ll give the draft a break, some resting time, before I attempt to come back and edit it.

After this, my plan is to use the same technique to try and get one of my other unfinished projects up and running. Maybe even something I’d be willing to show my agent, but we’ll see about that…