For the past few years I have been conducting an experiment. As anyone who has followed along for any length of time knows, I try to write one fifteen minute writing prompt each work day. It is a great way to get my brain in a writing frame of mind and get me sorted for a good day. while that is i’s main purpose, often times the prompts kick up story ideas or start stories that I want to see run to completion.
Some I simply work on and complete between other projects, like the newly released short story, The Last Sacrifice. Sometimes I know the story is going to take more and want the space to think about it for longer. And these prompts I set to the side, choosing one at the start of each year to use as my fifteen minute novel.
This experiment started when I noticed that at the end of the year I had a very high word count for my document where I keep the daily fifteen minute prompts and I wondered what would happen if I gave those same fifteen minutes to one story throughout the entire year.
That first year I did just that, taking the prompt and starting each day with the last sentence from the day before and going fifteen minutes each week day. I learned a lot about how I write from that incarnation of the experiment. It was, on it’s one a good lesson for me.
It did produce a rambling narrative that had the tendency to wander off into sub plots without my noticing until days later. which is the drawback of writing only fifteen minutes at a time, at least for me.
So the following year I decided to craft a very loose outline at the start of the year. While this worked as a general guideline, I did find that around June I worried about running out my outline and so I ended up lingering in places giving more detail to sections in an effort to make the story last the entire year. While some of this details were good and again taught me a lot about how I write, it also ended up taking me far from my original plot in a way that made editing somewhat of a nightmare. The details brought up a secondary story and to make either work, they needed to be separated into two separate manuscripts.
The following year I decided to go with a story that could be part of a series. I again started with an outline and when I reached a point where that story was nearing completion I put together an outline for what might be considered a sequel to the book. I rather liked this and again I learned a lot.
This year I decided to do something different. I chose a story that I wanted to write as a stand alone story and worked out the outline for it. And I told myself that if I finished it I could simply pick another prompt from the pile I wanted to write out and make an outline and go with that.
the story I started with was the story of Gwen. The first draft went along as expected. There were surprises as things occurred to me as I wrote them. While I start with an outline it is really a three to five sentence sort of thing. Gwen’s outline was…
- Gwen thinks she has life figured out but it all falls to pieces.
- Gwen steps out of her old life and realizes how narrow her vision was and how dependent on other people’s desires and plans it was.
- Starts to figure out who she is and what she wants.
- Goes back to face the situation she left and realizes she has changed
- launches herself into her new life lived on her terms.
That was the entire outline. while what I ended up with was a very rough draft and has places that will need to be trimmed down because I spent to long on them or beefed up because I skimmed over them, the first draft is complete. There are many missing bits, but that is an editing problem and no matter how I work with this experiment the goal is always to just get a full draft of a story out. Which I did.
However it was Mid September when I reached the end of Gwen’s story.
And you know how I promised myself I could start a different story with a new outline? Well I did start a new story but I didn’t get around to any sort of outline. To be honest, i am glad I did. It was very free form in it’s story and I think that if I had put together an outline of any sorts I might not have realized that I needed two characters to tell the story. One I started writing I realized I needed not just Anna’s tale but that of Marcus and that the two needed to intertwine. I took notes on Marcus as I went through the fifteen minute timed writings each morning.
I also knew I didn’t have an entire year to work on the story so I hurried through details and skimmed over some of the explanations in an effort to get as much of the story out as I could. While the year is at an end and the story is not, I am in a place where I do need to stop, go back and write the Marcus sections and delve into some of the things I skimmed over in my first pass through each morning. It is a story that has produced more side notes than any previous.
And working with it showed me where I need to spend a little extra time when writing.
I thought this was a fun way to go back for all the little prompts that wanted to grow into stories. And it is. I love this experiment. And I will be doing it again in 2024. It is a way to allow myself to think about an idea that might otherwise be pushed to the side, but more than that each time I write one of these fifteen minute novels I learn a lot about how I put stories together, how I think of plots and characters and what about each story interests me.
As I have gotten lots of positive feedback, it seems you find this interesting as well so I will be posting my experiment in 2024 as well. I also encourage any of you who have an idea noodling around in your brain or that might have come from one of the morning prompts to do your own experiment. it is a different sort of writing, but it is well worth it in the end.
For those who like numbers, the ‘complete’ first draft of Gwen came to 105,018 words and ran from January 1st to September 19th (186 days of writing). I am ending the year (September 20th- December 29th) for Anna with a wordcount of 41,641 and a copious bundle of notes.
And I can’t wait to see what the 2024 Fifteen Minute Novel Writing experiment brings. Tune in Monday as we kick off an entirely new storyline.
Ten til Midnight 