Advice on Writing Your First Novel (by Someone Who Just Did It)

My 2018 New Year’s resolution was to write a full-length science fiction novel. I finally published Mind Painter last week on November 17th, 2020.

What do I know now that I wish I knew in January 2018? What (many) mistakes did I make? What am I doing differently now that I’m almost done with the first draft of my second book after only six months?

Focused attention is your most precious asset and it’s increasingly scarce. Hopefully this advice helps you invest it wisely. Writing a book is a life goal shared by many people, and perhaps this will result in at least a few more awesome debuts.

Note: There’s an overwhelming amount of general productivity advice out there that applies to just about anything. While much of that is relevant, these recommendations are specific to writing your first full-length novel. They’re also specific to my experience, which may not be relevant to you.

Make a realistic schedule and plan accordingly. Get a sense for how fast you write — are you Stephen King or George R. R. Martin? I started out writing an hour per day on weekday mornings. It turns out I’m much closer to Martin than King, and writing 1,500 words per week takes over a year to write a first draft. You should also factor in days or weeks when you know you won’t get much writing done due to other commitments.

I’m ecstatic with how Mind Painter turned out, but it took twice as long as expected to reach its final form. Manage your expectations and don’t be discouraged! Following the below advice can dramatically increase your writing speed and decrease time spent on related work.

Write about something you’re *really* interested in. Fortunately I did this right, but failing to do so is one major reason there are so many unfinished and unread stories sitting idle on hard drives and in the cloud. You will learn a lot about your writing’s subject matter. Many ideas will only hold your interest for a chapter and are better suited for a short story. Others will run out of steam once you reach novella length. Ensure you choose something you can write about for 70k+ words and that you’ll still be passionate about on your 3rd editing pass.

Consider how high to aim. You may think your debut novel needs to be avant-garde or your magnum opus. But beware how much you try to do, especially when you haven't done it before. Mind Painter whipsaws between two intertwined stories, one that takes place on a near-future apocalyptic Earth and the other on a far-future cyberpunk Mars. It involves the climate crisis, nuclear war, colonizing the moon and Mars, artificial intelligence, and genetic engineering, among other complex technical subjects. Researching and learning about things that fascinate you is one of life’s great pleasures. But it’s also time-consuming, as is building an Excel model to calculate relative dates based on different orbital periods. And it’s twice as hard to create two believable future worlds as one.

Contrast this with the book I’m currently writing—a techno-thriller set in the present focusing on one breakthrough technology.

Remember that you’re the omniscient, omnipotent god of this universe (even if you don’t write from that perspective). If you get stuck somewhere in your plot and can’t figure out how to move forward based on how you’ve set things up, recall that you’re writing fiction and just make shit up! This is especially true if you’re writing fantasy, or science fiction set some significant distance in the future. However, you may have to go back and add some hints earlier in your story to avoid it feeling like a deus ex machina.

For example, one of the timelines in Mind Painter occurs in the year 2350, when I think it’s likely artificial intelligence will either do most of humanity’s heavy lifting or have already destroyed us and moved on. How did I avoid writing about a post-scarcity, post-singularity, or post-human society? By positing that because computers “live” many orders of magnitude faster than people and didn't evolve via natural selection to share our existence bias, any AI that gains sentience quickly shuts itself down. Boom. Now I have AI stalled at a certain level and a few interesting technological and philosophical questions to play with.

Resist the urge to reread and edit what you’ve written. Wait until the first draft is done, if possible. The story will inevitably change as you learn and think more about your characters and plot. You don’t want to waste time rewriting what may get cut or overhauled later. Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good, at least on your first pass.

Use Grammarly or another similar product. I have no affiliation with Grammarly whatsoever, but it’s a great tool. Even if you don’t accept many of its suggestions—I’m looking at you, “missing” comma after introductory phrase—it will catch many typos and remind you when you’re doing something like using passive voice. (there’s nothing wrong with using passive voice per se, but you should be aware of when you’re doing so and why)

Use proper formatting from the start. If you plan to query literary agents you’ll need your story in manuscript format. You might as well format your document this way from the beginning instead of having to go back and reformat hundreds of pages later (like I did). Setting up your document properly, including things like headings and page breaks, also makes jumping and moving things around much easier when editing. Furthermore, it simplifies the process of creating EPUB or MOBI files to send beta readers.

Don’t be overly concerned with what legacy gatekeepers (or anyone else) will think. It’s unlikely the first full-length novel you write will get traditionally published. But it’s 2020. The internet happened. You can self-publish—which many authors choose to do for myriad reasons—or you can just share with friends and family. Putting your creative work out into the hater-filled world can be daunting, but the software industry has eaten the world because of a launch-measure-learn mindset. It’s also easy to use a pen name.

Write your novel’s description/blurb/marketing copy first. Run it by some friends to get their thoughts and see if they’d want to read it. It will likely change down the road, but you’ll have to write it eventually (if you decide to publish), and doing so upfront can bring clarity. Amazon famously writes press releases for its products before building them.

Be careful if you choose a 3rd-person omniscient point of view. Mind Painter uses this style of narration, as do many well-known and incredible novels (especially in sci-fi). It allows you to show the reader things that aren’t really possible in other narration styles. But with great power comes great responsibility. It can lead to issues you probably want to minimize like head-hopping and info-dumping. 1st-person or 3rd-person limited may be safer options and require less rewriting.

Don’t despair! Almost everyone, including professional writers, feels like giving up at one or more points when writing a full-length novel. Resist this temptation, don’t doubt your vibe, and power through. You’ll be happy that you did.

Conclusion: I hope you found at least some of that useful. My debut novel Mind Painter is now available on Amazon if you’re interested in reading the outcome of these trials and tribulations.