April 26, 2020

The writing process is something hard to explain. It’s full of twists and turns. There are times when you feel like there’s a barricade blocking you from moving forward, and other times you feel as if you’re a free bird in a cloudless sky.

When Kayla and I finished version one of our novel back in March of 2019, we were elated. We weren’t strangers to writing as we’ve both always enjoyed creating our own personal short stories or poetry, but neither of us had attempted the feat of writing a novel. We spent the previous five years trying to complete it with full time jobs, living in separate states, and curveballs of life being thrown at us. When I moved back to Texas, Kayla and I decided it was time to get serious about finishing this. We wanted to prove to ourselves and each other that it was possible, and we did.

“Are we really finished?” I asked Kayla with butterflies in my stomach as I attempted not to cry. We wrote our ending, ran through an edit checklist, and decided this is it. We gave our work to a few trusted individuals for their feedback and suggestions and at that time, we thought we had finished. Little did we know, we were far from being done.  At that time, I don’t even think we thought of it as a “version one.” We knew we’d have feedback to evaluate and changes to make, but neither of us were prepared for how much work we actually had left. 

After about two months of patiently waiting, we reviewed every piece of feedback we received. Though we had an overwhelming amount of praise and assurance that we had a good, intriguing story, we also realized just how little we knew about writing a novel. There were a couple of plot issues, our character building was severely lacking, and our desired mystery factor was simply inadequate.

Our original goal was to get to the end. Once we received feedback and re-read version one, our new goal became writing the best possible version of our book. What did we do to ensure this goal was met?

1.  First, we had to read more. We both love reading, but honestly were not reading nearly enough during the initial writing process. Since last April, the two of us have collectively read nearly thirty books. We tried to stay in the young adult genre since that is what our novel is, but also branched out into others as well. Reading, and reading a lot, is a vital part of being a good writer and we learned that the hard way. Once the two of us picked up on details such as how books were typically sectioned, how characters were built, and when or when not to use heavy description, our own book began to really flourish.

2.  We researched. We started with Stephen King’s book On Writing. Kayla and I are both fans of Stephen King, but more importantly we wanted to learn from someone who has had many successful novels and many novels adapted into film. Stephen King writes, “…if you don’t want to work your ass off, you have no business trying to write well.” We learned several things from his book, but some of the major takeaways were not writing in a passive voice, having purpose for every scene, and the importance and how to of character building. Kayla and I started with a huge change. We went from first person to third person omniscient. The more we read, the more we realized just how hard it was to write a novel from a teenage boys perspective. First of all, neither one of us had ever been a teenage boy. Second, we weren’t experienced enough writers to portray other character’s thoughts and emotions without changing the point of view and making it a rather confusing read. That brought us to ensuring better character development. We listed out each main character and made lists of their physical appearances and personality traits. From there, anything written about them in the novel had to match the list we made. We added more meaningful scenes with some of the main characters and took out scenes with other characters that weren’t as important or didn’t add to the overall story. With that, we combed through all the dialogue to answer the questions, “Does this sound like something they’d say?” and “Does this have a purpose?” 

3.  We made hard decisions. When looking at our book through a different lens and analyzing what scenes brought little to our overall story, we made hard decisions to delete nearly half of our book and rewrite scenes with true purpose to the development of the story. As stated above, we added scenes to help build characters with the hopes of creating a bond between the reader and them and revamped our dialogue. We decided to completely change the ending and researched the hell out of how to end book one of a trilogy. Yes, we are planning on making Vitality a trilogy! 

4. Maybe most importantly, we were humbled. It takes a lot to admit one’s downfalls and shortcomings. It was hard to admit that version one of our novel just wasn’t that great. Once we were reading more, it became clear that we were severely lacking and that hurt. However, that was such a vital step in our growth. We admitted to these shortcomings and for the most part, overcame them. I can see such a major difference in our writing from just one year ago. In our weakness we have found strength. We acknowledged where we could grow, and we did. In fact, we flourished. I’m so proud of the hard work we put into this novel and into ourselves as writers. Humility will open doors.

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