Two or three months ago I started writing the overview and outline for my next novel. I'd had the idea for many years, even writing a few pages of it as a screenplay, but now after finishing and releasing the fourth Louise Miller crime novel, 'TIL IT BLEEDS, I wanted to write something other than gritty historical Yorkshire crime. Out of all my ideas, The Vote was the one that shouted the most to be heard.
So I started on an overview which quickly morphed from the original idea into something even larger in scope (and the original idea is quite a big one already). It changed from a modern setting into a near-future dystopian one, which in turn led me to creating an entire world-building bible complete with timeline, explanation of the new world system, technologies and more. So much more.
The knock on effect of this 12 page, 3000 word document was a much more detailed outline of the novel than I've ever done before. For the Louise Miller books, each one had a 1-3 page outline, with bullet points for each chapter; perhaps a sentence or two. This version of The Vote had 46 pages and over 18'000 words with each chapter being broken down into every story beat. I also did this for book 2 in what had now become a four book series. Even more, I had rough outlines for a further two more series all set within what I had now called The Codex Universe; 10 books altogether. Each with their own outlines.
I then started writing the first draft. If you've been checking in, you'll have seen the word count tracker rising steadily over the last month, getting up to 15'000 words - I've actually written a lot more than that, closer to 25'000. At first I was loving it, really enjoying getting the words down each day, aiming for 750 clean new words. Most times I got a lot more than that.
But pretty soon after starting, I found myself quite bored. I'd outlined the book so detailed that in my mind, I'd already written the whole thing. I felt there were no little avenues to go exploring, no secrets to unearth. It felt stale as well as slightly forced. Lucy had read some of it and thought it was really good but I just wasn't feeling it. I tried to get some inspiration by reading the last two original Hunger Games books as well as Station Eleven by Emily St. John, but that didn't work either.
So I stopped writing. I moved all the outlines, world bible and drafts to a new folder and saved it all away. Then I cracked open a new word document to write the original pitch for the story, which is:
THE VOTE: What if an alien vessel suddenly appeared over Long Eaton? What if all power, social structure and leadership failed? How would people react? What would be the fallout of such an arrival? And then, what if they demanded that the world give up half its population or face extinction and were given a 90 day countdown to decide by an electronic Vote. How would you decide? How would I?
I gave myself to the end of December to write the book, and have gone with a 1500 word a day target, allowing me time to write around my busy daily schedule, while at the same time ensuring I can get good, clean words down each day.
It's okay to start again, if not entirely from scratch, but back to the original idea. Sometimes you have to go several steps forward on a project only to have to scootch back a long ways to get it right. What I have written in the dystopian draft can be used in some way in the new draft. Certain names of characters and locations for instance will be re-used but tweaked slightly, or gone at from a different angle.
The main character, David Holt, is still a novelist. His wife is still Sarah and their two kids, Leo and Maya are still adorable. What I'm not doing is fully fleshing out the story this time. I know the beginning; I know the ending - that has never changed. I'm not going to bullet point the chapters just yet, but I have made a few notes for chapter 1.
This new draft already has 1000 words written and I feel a lot happier with them. That's not to say things may change again, but I'm hoping I'm on the right track this time.
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