Last year I looked at all of my fifteen minute writing prompts, saw that the word count was about the same as a book length manuscript and thought, what if I just picked one prompt and wrote on it every week day for an entire year? Would I end up with a novel out of it?
So that is what I did. I’ll admit, I did no planning. I picked a prompt that I thought looked interesting enough that I could tell a good story with it and not get bored midway through the year. And then each morning I sat down and wrote fifteen minutes on the story. The end result was a complete manuscript. It is by no means a finished manuscript. And admittedly I very much rushed the end just to get to the end of the story. But it did end up doing what I set out to do. I wrote a complete first draft (very roughly) by writing fifteen minutes a day.
However I think I can improve, with a little planning. I am planning on repeating this experiment in 2022 with a different prompt writing chosen from the stock pile of story ideas created this year during the fifteen minute prompts. Before I do, lets look at some of the things that happened with 2021’s Fifteen Minute Novel.
First off I started with the writing from a fifteen minute prompt and a basic idea. The prompt basically set up my story. James witnessed a shooting and entered witness protection, leaving his life behind to start fresh as someone else. My basic idea revolved around someone creating a new life as an adult. I had him go from an expected position with the family company where his place was more or less set up since birth to being on his own with no actual expectations to his actions. I wanted to follow James to see how he created a new life out of his new situation.
And then the story sort of took a few detours. People with guns appeared. His family company was doing something shady that caused the government to need to look at them and an agent went bad. James started to build a new life, but things just kept happening. Which I suppose is very much like real life.
Unfortunately since I was planning for James to leave all of his old life behind I never planned out what his family company did. I don’t think i ever quite worked that out but whatever it is, they had some sort of government contract. I think I might have started to slide towards biotech at some point. It is something I will have to focus on when I begin editing.
Because oh my does James need editing. Tangents I would normally have cut out ended up being left in because I wrote them three fifteen minute sessions prior and wasn’t editing until the end. In some cases I let them drift off, in others they took me to places that when polished will make this a better story. I like the story I ended up with in all it’s messy glory. It needs severe editing though. Since it ended up with a word count of 150,478 words, there is plenty to work with.
I like the unexpected parts and I like that not planning created something completely unexpected. I do think I need a little bit of reigning in. I don’t want to do a lot of planning, but I will be doing a little. I have chosen my writing prompt for 2022 and after choosing it I broke out three points. Basically giving the story three Acts. I gave myself one sentence to describe the beginning, a second sentence to describe the midpoint of the story and a third sentence as to where I think the ending might be. That is the most vague of the sentences and the most likely to change.
It isn’t much in the way of planning, but it does give me a bare bones map with plenty of space for wandering between. For this year I am going to use that but do no other planning. And then I’ll reevaluate at the end of 2022.
There is one further thing that I am going to add. Part of my wandering was due to the fact that I thought I might finish the story of James well before the year ran out. I noticed this back in June and that is where I could tell that a lot of my extra storylines started appearing. Since the goal is to write a novel in fifteen minute increments and not take a year to write a novel, I have a plan. I will be writing on my chosen prompt until the story is finished. If it takes all of 2022 then I am okay with that. If it happens to finish early, then I will just go back to the file of more than 250 timed writings I did in 2021 pick a second story and start that.
But that is only if I finish the fifteen minute novel early this year. I might not. I’m not going to rush it, but just knowing that I have that option may just keep me focused on writing the story I am writing instead of casting about for ways to extend my time writing it. That way I leave myself open to the story as it comes, but don’t feel the need to fill time. I think that may help me craft a better Fifteen Minute Novel in 2022.
So that is the plan. The Fifteen Minute Novel will continue in 2022 as I break out a new story. I’m going to try to learn from 2021 and make it a bit better. Perhaps at the end of 2022 I’ll have learned a bit more. At least I hope I will have learned a bit more. either way the New Fifteen Minute Novel will begin Monday, January 3rd, 2022. I’ll see you there.
Ten til Midnight 