Writing Your First Novel: How to Fix an (Accidentally) Autobiographical Novel

Some of you may be participating in our 100 Day Book curriculum, writing your first story on your own, or kicking around the idea of starting that manuscript.

Writing your first fiction is hard. It’s a struggle. It’s a learning process.

And it’s often autobiographical, even if you don’t mean it to be. And that’s okay.

However, as you write your first story, it would be worth stepping back and considering how much you need your book to repeat your life.

Great writing comes from immense ordeals, of course! But, does your first journal need to be your life?

Can you start writing something inspired by your life, more not the same, instead?

Wait, My Main Character Is Me!

Every character is a piece of the author. I convey, how do you “write what you know” if you can’t exploit who you are familiar with?

The thing with writing your first book is that the prime reference will most probably be based on yourself. Heavily based on yourself.

What I intend by this is that their point of view likely comes from your point of view in real world. When it’s your first time writing, it’s not uncommon that your main character shares your perspective.

My first finished novel was a dramatized version of my life at the time. I didn’t recognize it when I was writing, but my primary reference was me.

Her sister was my sister. Her husband was my husband. I believe I made up one character( an elderly neighbor woman ), but other than that I mostly just reformed the names.

Even if you find your first draft to be “too you, ” don’t panic. It’s not a waste of time, and you can still save it from obtaining dust for eternity.

Writing your first story is hard work, and discover how to write a POV or POVs that are inspired by you without being precisely you is a learning process.

And part of the artistic process, very!

“Your first story is more likely to be heavily based on your own life–and that’s okay! Keep writing.Tweet thisTweet 5 Reasons to Roll With It

You might be saying, “I didn’t mean for this to be autobiographical. Now I have to start over.”

No, you don’t.

Here are just a handful of reasons to go with the flow and impede writing your first story 😛 TAGEND 1. You’re getting into a writing habit.

Writing necessary dedication, day conduct, and a ton of patience. Just like anything else important, you have to prioritize your writing occasion and prepared points and deadlines for yourself or you’ll never finish.

With your first romance, you’re practicing your writing habit by reveal what time of day you write best, learning how many oaths you can reasonably produce in each hearing, and developing your “process.”

Writing discussions should be dedicated to learning your wording of story writing or nonfiction writing.

Don’t obsess over whether or not your writing is as good as a published author’s. Instead, write your first tale with a goal of developing good writing habits.

This is what will push you through writing lows like writer’s block, perfectionism, or imposter syndrome.

And all of these habits is supportive you time and again as you placed more oaths down on reoccurring space pages.

Some strategies to nurture healthy writing attires include:

Set a daily command tally( or protect a programme epoch of the working day for writing ).

You is likely to be like to make a” Word Count Jar” or “Word Count Bank” and add or remove money from the jar every day you do or don’t meet your name counting purpose. Treat yourself to something you’ve special like a yummy dinner or special knack when you’ve added a certain amount.

Find a writing blog( like this one !) or listen to a writing podcast that learns you something about writing without shadowing progress made on your first journal.

Different columnists have a different writing process, and others have similar ones, extremely. Whether or not you enjoy writing gratuities that come with the territory or a step-by-step process on how to write your first bible, turning to aspiring columnists turned published columnists is a good way to develop health writing practices that will lead to your finished book.

Read! Don’t stop read!

Never stop reading, even as you write. Numerous writers’ gambles narration ideas come from reading wide and deep. Your writing process will only benefit from a bookshelf that its full of bestsellers, short-lived tales, classics, debuts, contemporary legends, and a variety of genres.

Do you want to become a great writer with magnificent fib doctrines? Then you need to read. You need to learn from the best.

2. You’re exercise your proficiency and observe yourself.

Writing is a lot of work.

Structure, persona arc and improvement, B areas, ambiance, style, etc. are all things you need to keep track of when writing a novel.

Because your life is so familiar, exploiting it as substance realise it easier to focus on the finer phases and causes you develop your writing style without having to concentrate as much on reputations or original storyline.

When you move on to the next diary, or even the second draft, you’ll be much more confident in your writing.

But for now, lean on the reason you decided to write your first novel in the first place. Use that to finish your book.

Don’t be too hard on yourself if your first being narrative feels a little too close to home.

3. You’re learning to differentiate attributes.

A common difficulty with brand-new writers( and let’s face it, some seasoned ones) is all their attributes are similar. They talk the same, act the same, sometimes even ogle the same.

Drawing from people in real life can help with this.

You know how your sister would act, what her speech patterns are, that harassing little half smiling she gets when she’s right and knows it. No one else is like her. Writing “her” into your diary will help you develop richer attributes in later stories.

However, while your courages has been possible to similar identities to beings in their own lives, that doesn’t mean they have to share identical backstories.

If you are worrying that your people are carven copies of one another, and that inconveniences you, maybe consider how you can make their backstories different.

Take a writing disruption era and dedicate it to getting to know your attributes a bit better by writing out these backstories in a synopsis of their life. If it helps, try meet a photo online that best fits this character–but is not that sister who provoked them.

Are you starting to see them somewhat in a different light now? Is that difference concluding it easier or harder to write them?

If easier, bravo, and keep going!

If more difficult, scrap this persona period as one for practise, and give yourself a break for making the characters so alike others in your real world. It’s your first volume. You’re learning!

4. You’re memorize to use real world.

I just said you shouldn’t use real life, right? Not exactly.

You will always use real life as a basis for your tales, but soul should be a trigger for muse instead of reproduced verbatim.

As you’re writing your first tale, you’re learning to take notes, to watch people’s affectations, to recall weird discourses you had three years ago. You’re learning to pay attention.( And hopefully you’re learning to always carry something to write with .)

P.S. If you haven’t tried writing( and taking notes) with Scrivener more, I highly recommend it.

Carrying a writer’s journal in your back pocket is still in good wont. Using Scrivener to taken due note and plot and write your work is too. You can speak more about our diary Scrivener Superpowers in this post.

5. You’re going to finish a romance!

Remember how you wanted to write a novel, which is why you started the process to begin with? You’re still doing that!

Even if it never assures the light of day, you will have written your first story. It will exist.

And when you move on to the next hypothesi, you’ll be old hat at this whole novelist thing.

However, if you get hung up on your story needing to be perfect, on it needing to be as good as what your future books will inevitably be, you’ll never finish this one.

Finishing is the most important step you can accomplish this time round! You’ll learn so much better about tale organize, your writing process, and other writing importants by fulfilling what you set out to do in the beginning of your writing challenge.

You can’t edit anything that isn’t written.

In the same lighting, you’ll never learn so much better about writing a first work as you do from actually finishing your first novel.

Whether or not you’re writing a 50,000 parole MG book or a 100,000 statement imagination romance, finish your narrative. Share it with others. And prepare for the second draft.

Up the Stakes

I know it seems like I’m saying writing your first romance is just a practice run, but that’s not inevitably the subject. Besides the above reasons to stick with it, I have another secret 😛 TAGEND

You can still save this book.

So your main character is you at the core. She’s doing what you do daily. She’s taking her puppy for a walking, going to the grocery store, pushing with her partner. She’s always doing something, so you feel like there’s a ton of action.

But where’s the conflict?

A list of action is not a story. There must be conflict. Your private living probably isn’t very dramatic, and that’s okay. You can still use instances of your life to write your novel.

Just up those stakes.

If your main character goes to the grocery store, what happens? Does she get mugged in the parking lots? Does she come across an old kindle? Does she have a mental explosion after used to identify the collect is out of her favorite toilet tissue?

Something has to rub your main character the wrong way in order for there to be a story. Find existing conflicts and you’ll have a book, whether your people are a little too true to life or not.

“The mystery to writing an amazing first story( or any novel, certainly ): Raise the stakes.Tweet thisTweet

( A NOTE FOR THOSE MEANING TO WRITE AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY/ MEMOIR: This section applies to you, more. You still need to have conflict in your tale. The divergence is you need to remember what the conflict was at the time instead of building it up .)

Keep Moving Forward

Even if upping the bets doesn’t turn your raw material into glistening golden, it’s okay.

After my first tale turned out too true to life, I stagnated a bit. I articulated it in a drawer somewhere.( I is definitely no hypothesi which drawer now, but I’m sure the poor manuscript has a nice layer of dust and some expired tickets to keep it company .) I wondered if I should try to rework some more and decided it wasn’t worth the effort. The floor simply felt doneto me.

Knowing that made me obsess I didn’t have any imagination or writing choppers. But I picked myself up and wrote a pair bad abruptly storeys. I started three other fictions that didn’t get off the ground.

I kept writing .

It didn’t take long for me to get out of my slump. A little while later, I was basically exploding with ideas to write about. I’d improved my intelligence to write and opened the floodgates of brainchild in the process. The next story was a dark fantasy, with reputations that had personalities all their own and a nature that was drastically different from my neighbourhood grocery store.

That notebook turned into Surviving Death, and was published this month.

Now I have so many doctrines, it’s hard to keep up.

Keep writing . Keep practicing. The remainder will fall in line.

Is your work a little too autobiographical? What are you going to do to up the posts? Let me know in the comments!

PRACTICE

Today I require you to take fifteen minutes to write about something you was your day. A discussion, a patronize trip, cleansing your live, anything. Keep it as true to life as possible except for one thing: conflict. Up the stakes.

When you’re done, share your writing in the comments. Don’t forget to comment on your fellow writers’ work!

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