How I Wrote a Novel in 2 Months and 20 Days

Two months, 20 days: that’s how long it took me to write Book 2 of The Rosteval Saga (all 161,900-plus words of it).

How did I do it?

How did I go from taking more than two-and-a-half years to write a complete draft (a very rough one) of The Altar of My Fate…

…to writing Book 2 in 81 days?

That’s what I want to share with you today: a method for writing better fiction in less time.

My hope is that if you’re a fellow author or aspiring author, learning about this method will encourage you and prove useful. And if you’re not a writer, maybe you’ll still find it interesting.

Book 1 is Done. Now What?

Back in late August, I did a celebratory post about how I’d completed the latest draft of The Altar of My Fate, book 1 of The Rosteval Saga.

I completed that draft in a little over two months—but I did it by substantially excerpting a previous draft, one I wrote over the course of about seven months (late November 2020-late May 2021).

(As an aside, that draft was quite different from my original finished draft, which I wrote from spring of 2016 to August 11, 2018).

All of that to say, I had a potentially major problem.

You see, despite all of that time and energy I spent on Altar, I really had very little clue about what I wanted to do for Book 2.

Not no clue: in fact, I had embedded some story hooks, that is to say unresolved mysteries and questions, within Altar in the belief that I could grow them into a story in Book 2.

But I still had very little idea what I wanted to do.

So, that was the challenge I faced at the end of last August. But within less than one month, I started Book 2.

How did I do it? Short answer: it’s all about method.    

Gardeners and Architects: The Two Ways to Write a Novel

The conventional wisdom is that there are basically two ways to write a novel: you can be a gardener, or you can be an architect.

Gardeners Grow Novels…

Gardeners are also known as “pantsers,” which is charming if you know it refers to “going by the seat of the pants” (and not a World War II German tank).

People who write novels using this method plant “character seeds” and grow them until they have a completed story.

That’s the essence of it, anyway: see where the story goes rather than try to plan it all out in advance.

The good news about this approach is that it makes for some amazing characters and compelling stories.

The bad news is that “gardeners” sometimes write themselves into corners and have trouble finishing novels.

…Architects Plan Them in Detail

Now compare that with architects, also known as “plotters” because, well, they plot…

And by “plot,” I mean they write outlines, not that they’re dastardly schemers.

The good news about this approach is that it’s nice and structured: it’s harder to write yourself in a corner.

But there’s a downside, too: people who use this method tend to struggle more when it comes to character creation and believability.

Which Way?

So, which one did I use?

As it turns out, the answer is both—and you can too, and I think you’ll find it makes for a “best of both worlds” scenario.

With that said, I have to issue a brief disclaimer: there’s no one “right method” for everyone, and a lot of people are probably somewhere on a spectrum between “gardening” and “architecture.”

Ultimately, whatever method works best for you the writer is the method you should use…

…but maybe try this one and see if it actually does work for you.

Okay, disclaimer over. Time to talk about a kick-butt method for writing a novel.

Is There a “Goldilocks Zone” Method for Writing?

If you’ve ever read the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, you’ll understand the association between the little blond girl and the concept of “just right.”

This charming children’s story of a young girl who encounters anthropomorphic ursids is also the source of an interesting concept in astronomy: the “Goldilocks Zone.”

Also known as the “habitable zone,” the Goldilocks Zone is the range of planetary orbits with the right temperature for water to remain liquid. And the thinking, of course, is that where there’s liquid water (and other things), there maybe could be life.

I’m going to take some considerable liberties with this concept, but bear with me.

Just as astronomer-types hoping to find life on other planets will tend to focus on the Goldilocks Zone…

…because it’s the “just right” in between two extremes (water vapor on the one hand, ice on the other)…

…so too writers can find a “Goldilocks Zone” between gardening (“pantsing”) and architecture (“plotting”). Let’s look at that now.

How I Did It

So, after all that, here’s how I wrote a 161,900-plus-word novel in 81 days:

First of all, remember that I said I had some “story hooks,” some unresolved mysteries, embedded within Altar.

Did I know what those would lead to? Not really.

At most, I had very general ideas.

So, I took a few weeks, and I brainstormed.

Here’s where the Goldilocks approach came in: I wrote a very bare-bones, bullet-point-type outline. In other words, I wrote out some story beats.

And then for each scene, I would “sketch out” more bullet points, i.e., story beats for that scene… and then I’d get to work.  

And the ideas started to grow up from the ground. And the more I worked at those ideas, the more they blossomed.

This is basically what I had done with Altar, but over the course of writing Book 2 I leveled up.

To be specific, until recently I considered 2,000-plus-to-3,000-plus words a day a good day.

But then I found I could hit 6,000-plus words a day… and I could do that most days.

This is the beauty of the “Goldilocks” approach: it has just enough structure so you know where you’re going, where you need to end up…

…but it also has enough room for creativity and spontaneity.

The beauty of it, too, is that writing faster may also mean writing better. At a minimum, it doesn’t mean your quality will suffer.

Seriously: I’ve been writing more fiction in less time… and if anything, I’d say the quality of my output has improved.   

Crediting My Inspiration

All of that said, of course I didn’t come up with all of this on my own. I have to credit The Fiction Formula by Sean M. Platt and Johnny Truant, and Fiction Unboxed by the same gentlemen.

These books describe the very method I had been using in some form (they call it the “smarty pantser” approach), and reading them encouraged me to push myself harder and go farther.

This method may or may not be the best method for you… but it has helped me produce more fiction and better fiction at a much faster clip.   

Good luck, everyone! I’ll share more about Book 2, including the title, after Altar is published in early January.