Control: The Three Stages of Writing
I, Dalton Lewis, write novels despite having paranoid schizophrenia: a terrible mental health condition in which I talk to voices inside my head and rarely pay attention to the world around me. This makes it hard for me to create a story that tracks from chapter to chapter and makes sense. I have to work twice as hard to make the story reasonable and have the character motivations believable and to not have plot holes or logical gaps in the stories.
How do I get writing done? I don’t even know how I do it, but I do it. I know from experience that I can’t work a normal job. I will just get fired within the first few months of trying or quit with disgust at my inability to handle the job. Writing, though — I write almost every day. I want to continue to write almost every day of my life, forever. I will always try to say something with my stories.
I write three drafts of a novel and then I’m done. I do an exploratory draft first. In this draft I develop ideas and create characters and try to create interesting storylines and conflicts. For example I tried to do some research into the American Civil War. I learned about an incident in which a printing press was burned to the ground and the owner was killed in a fight because he wouldn’t back down. He was printing anti-slavery books and the mob wouldn’t have that. I turned that into the first sequence in my book — a man rescues a slave and they write a book about slavery. Then the slavers show up to destroy their printing press and punish the family, leading to regrettable consequences for the family, the slavers, and everyone involved.
I did more research, and that led to more scenes for the novel. There were some people who decided to head down south with a few people and some weapons, intending to free slaves and start a landslide of helping people. They were quickly arrested and mostly killed, mainly by Robert E. Lee. This became another interesting sequence in the novel — I wanted to show the general stupidity of a few people showing up to make a difference against a huge army of people.
Then there was the war. The first significant fight was a battle at Bull Run. It was a terrible battle for the Northern good guys who were whipped by the Rebel Southern forces in a terrible defeat — which makes for a good story. I had a solid first half of a novel with these three elements — the printing press, the attempt at hero work, and the first battle of the war. I then had to develop the second half of the book.
That was the building up of the hero work of one Ulysses S. Grant, who fought in a number of battles in the western theater in the war over the next year or so. This gave me a chance to create a character who could face off against the best minds of the south in an intellectual and physical challenge. I created a character who would start out an ineffective alcoholic constable and forge him into an elite military commander.
Next I created lore. Finnegan and I sat together one night and went over the creation of the fantasy planet on which this happened. We created the gods and their conflicts and the creation of the elves, orcs, fae, and humans and the conflicts between them. They split the continent into two. A kaiju was created. A great city was created. Armies were created. Nobles were created. Death was invented. Jisa, the god of the dead, tried to create undead creatures, but Malaray and her paladins stopped him. I made a full set of lore for the land instead of just throwing the story together and saying it has elves, dwarves, and humans.
That was the first draft. Then came the revisions. I sat there, chatting with the voices in my head, not paying attention to the world around me, but I did want to get this done. Rewriting a 75,000 word manuscript takes a couple of weeks at least. The second draft meant making everything make sense and work on a surface level — fixing the what happened and the characters and their beats.
I needed everything to flow and for the characters to have arcs. I needed to have the scenes flow and develop a story from scene to scene. This all needed to build into something. The character, Bowen Lansrowe, needed to turn from a drunken constable into a strong, powerful leader of men and warrior in battle. Nexton Sanctum needed to overcome being a slave and fight to believe in something — anything — despite his endless cynicism and belief that everything is corrupt and broken and will end badly. Karma Townes needed to die and be reborn as a new person to atone for owning slaves when she was younger.
Then, once the second draft is finished, I need to write the polish. That means fixing the words — the grammar and cutting useless words and making every description shine. I need to fix any mistakes — any character motivations that don’t make sense or any characters that don’t track from scene to scene. Everything has to be perfect in this draft. I can’t forget about a blue gem from one scene that doesn’t get mentioned later.
That’s it. Three drafts and then I’m done. My mental health condition makes it difficult to create a story that makes sense from chapter to chapter. I just have to keep trying. I will eventually stop writing — when I die. Not until. I hope you are the same way.
Thanks, and take care, friends.
The Dark Gods is available now.
