Lazette Gifford, author of many published novels and prolific web writer, came up with a new system of drafting a novel several years ago. This method, called phase drafting, has been adopted by writers who want to plan thoroughly before writing, so that plot problems won't stall the story halfway through the writing.
Many authors eschew outlines and drafting because they feel it doesn't allow for creative exploration. With phase drafting, the creative exploration happens at the planning and outlining level. When writing the manuscript, all that is needed is expansion of each idea. Many people want to know how to write fast and how to write a novel in thirty days or less. Phase drafting helps with that.
How Phase Drafting Works
The first step in a phase draft is to plan the conflict and the turning points of the story. Much as in the Snowflake Method, by Randy Ingermanson, one should begin with an idea for a story and continue adding to it.
Once the conflict and turning points are decided upon, begin writing the arc of each scene. Just like a story arc, so a scene has a beginning, middle, and end. There should be conflict in each scene, either internal or external.
Use the arc of each scene to break the scene down into phases. A phase might be a snippet of conversation, how a character feels about something, or an action or event. Each phase is small and should focus on one thing. In her article, It's Just a Phase, Lazette Gifford states that a novel may have as many as 300 phases.
Three hundred phases sounds huge, but broken down, if a writer puts thirty scenes in a novel, each scene would have ten phases. When writing the phases, using a numbering system in a word processing program will make it simple to add, delete, and rearrange the phases. If changes are made, the word processing program will automatically renumber.
This writing method can also be used in novel writing software. If a phase needs to be moved, most writing programs allow the user to drag and drop the phase or scene to another point in the story.
How to Use the Phase Draft
Once the phases are complete, and this part of the process could take as long as two weeks, plan a schedule for writing. Setting a goal of how many phases will be completed each day makes the writing seem to go faster. Fleshing out each phase might only require 200-400 words. Chunking the writing into small phases gives the psychological boost of having completed a task when it gets checked off the list.
Check marks can be made on the actual phase draft, or a progress spreadsheet can be used. There are plenty of links to writing progress spreadsheets available through the NaNoWriMo forums, or the writer can create a new one. It can be as simple as one line for each phase, a word count, and a date of completion.
The benefits of using this system are that the entire novel is plotted out in advance of the writing process. The discovery mode happens during planning. This way the writer doesn't have to stop and figure out plot problems or rework whole sections of the novel. Also, the writer can focus on writing one small section at a time, which seems to increase productivity. The phase drafting method can be done with pencil and paper, in a word processing program, or even in novel writing software, making it a flexible writing system.
Suzanne Pitner - Suzanne Pitner is a teacher and published writer. A member of RWA and YARWA, she writes fiction as Suzanne Lilly.
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