Guest Post by Jack Smith
Robert Garner McBrearty, author of the Sherwood Anderson Foundation Fiction Prize for his collection Episode, recently shared a technique he’s been using to draft a novel.
Write the whole thing through, regardless of length, and then expand from within.
This is a great process idea. Of course, prior to drafting, you do need a sense for your character and where you want to take this character. But, assuming you have that, just shoot through the draft. Don’t worry about all the scenes you might flesh out your novel with, all the secondary characters you might come up with, subplots, etc. Just write through what appears to be the essential conflicts—the ones that tell your basic story.
McBrearty has expanded his original version of 50 pages into a present version of close to 200. He says: “The first writing, even though rough and skeletal, established a sense of voice and who the main characters were. New scenes occurred to me and the skeletal scenes filled out with sensory detail and character interactions. I know I have plenty of rewriting left to do, more development still to come, but I’ve got a good base to work from. I’m confident I’ll finish; the novel won’t be abandoned.”
Keeping in mind McBrearty’s process idea, here’s another approach. This one starts with a kernel idea:
1. Write a one- two-sentence description of your proposed novel (the log line).
2. Expand this description to 300 words or so.
3. Write a novel from this, even if means 10 to 20 pages first draft.
4. Expand your novel from this short version.
5. Reread your novel.
6. Continue expanding.
7. You will probably need to rethink your initial description as you go.
Let’s say, though, that you’ve already written a full-length novel, or close to it, and you’re wondering whether you ought to keep everything—some material seems rather extraneous to your character’s overall arc. It’s hard to cut! But weed out what seems extraneous material. Strip your novel down to its key developments—its basic structure. Look again at the material you weeded out. Can it fit somewhere? Perhaps portions of it can. Perhaps whole scenes you temporarily cut might, in fact, work after all—perhaps in a different place in the novel. Or you might decide that some material you cut does, in fact, take the novel off course. If so, eliminate the dross. Finally, take your new, stripped-down draft and expand from within. Seeing the bare bones of your work helps in creation but also in revision.
Jack Smith is author of the novel Hog to Hog, which won the George Garrett Fiction 
Prize (Texas Review Press. 2008), and is also the author of Write and Revise for Publication: A 6-Month Plan for Crafting an Exceptional Novel and Other Works of Fiction, published earlier this year by Writer’s Digest
Over the years, Smith’s short stories have appeared in North American Review, Night Train, Texas Review, and Southern Review, to name a few. He has also written some 20 articles for Novel & Short Story Writer’s Market, as well as a dozen or so pieces for The Writer.He has published reviews in numerous literary journals, including Ploughshares, Georgia Review, Missouri Review, Prairie Schooner, American Review, Mid-American Review, and the Iowa Review.
Robert Garner McBrearty’s fiction has been widely published, including in The Pushcart 
Prize, Missouri Review, Narrative Magazine, Mississippi Review, and New England Review. He’s the author of three collections of short stories: A Night at the Y; Episode, which was awarded the Sherwood Anderson Foundation Fiction Award; and most recently, Let the Birds Drink in Peace, published by Conundrum Press in 2011. He’s won fellowships to The MacDowell Colony and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA, and his short stories have frequently been performed at Stories on Stage in Denver and at the Texas Bound show at the Dallas Museum of Art.
Expanding the first draft resonates with me. I often find that as I write the first draft I’m thinking of ways to deepen the characters and plot in previous scenes. Sometimes this is problematic- going back and forth tends to mess with the timeline! With the idea of expanding the first draft, I can write the bare boned plot all the way through, then go back and fill in. Thank you :)
That’s how my current manuscript is going to happen. The first draft, once I reach the end, won’t even hit 50,000 words. I’ve already made notes on several scenes to add and new subplots to wind into the storyline. While I usually do have to add description, adding this much is really foreign to me.
I’ll let you know if it actually works.
Jack, thanks so much for blogging today.
That’s the way I work, too–I’m writing so short these days (outlining seems to do it to me), that I’m always working to expand my ideas out.
As someone who has been promising himself to write that novel, I have hesitated for many years becasue, I am bit dyslexic and therefore grammar and its structure is quite a significant challange but I decide put my ideas into writing, using a similar process, with the view, I can get somebody to review and help me or I will go get a text book and try to figure out how grammar and structuring works when I review and re-edit. So I have built up a whole file of notes upon notes, and outlines of different stories, and as I get ideas I add to them, I also am building the characters up giving them depth and back stories, I am then concenmtrating on a single story, and write a brief synposis of a chapter or section of a chapter that I expand later. So I am yet again encouraged by you and this blog site, becausee it is a big help. It provides confirmation as in this post whilst at other tiems informs and help me modify or expand how am working, thank you
Elizabeth – Thanks for hosting Jack.
Jack – It makes complete sense to first draft a novel and then expand it. You don’t really know which scenes will need more ‘meat’ until they’re written, after all. Thanks for these helpful thoughts.
Jack–
Perhaps the best advice you give in your solid post is to “write a one-two sentence description of your proposed novel (the log line).” Anyone who takes this suggestion seriously, and works hard to produce such a sentence or two, has already avoided a great many future problems. When writing the log line AFTER the fact proves hard to do, that in my experience is evidence something is wrong, something that could prove hard to fix. Thanks.
Thanks, everyone! I really appreciate your comments, and thanks, Elizabeth, for hosting me on your great site!
I really love this idea. I think this could really work with my current writing style and I’m excited to try it. Thank you!
I love this idea too.
I like this idea! I kind of think I work this way naturally. I plow through a rough draft and don’t look back. Then I go back and “add fleas” and other stuff that improves the story.
OMG – I am so happy to read this. It explains how I write. I’ve been writing for decades and finally arrived at this process as the method that works for me. it seems so logical and yet leaves creative freedom–and the blended approach works. Now that I have time (early retirement) I am working as speeding up the process by working at it daily. Yeehaw – I have found my “people.”