Writing Tips 31: My Relay Approach to Success

I am not one of those writers who can write non-sequentially. I’d love to be able to decide which scene I felt like writing on any given day, write it, then patch all the fragments together further down the line. But my brain works in a linear way and I can’t cope with the chaos of not writing in order!

However, I also struggle to plan the entire plot before I’ve written any of it. I can’t see all the way to the end while I’m still at the beginning; I have no idea what my characters are going to be doing, thinking or feeling by the time they get there. I’ve recently realised I think about a novel in sections, and as I’m writing I’ll become very familiar with the shape of those sections, even if I can’t envisage the story as a whole.

For example, I’ll start with an intense focus on the first ten or so chapters, on making sure they’re doing what the opening of a novel should – creating intrigue, setting up characters, propelling the reader into the story. When I’m happy that they’ve done that, I can let the baton pass onto the next leg of the story – and this is where the relay metaphor comes into play . . .

Because it does feel, for me, like a hand-over. That’s not to say I won’t re-visit that starting leg (I will, many times, when I do my structural edits), it’s more that, once the start is working pretty much as it should, I feel able to let the novel move into a new stage. Writing the middle section will feel considerably different from writing the beginning. Even though it couldn’t exist withoutthe set-up of the first few chapters, it breaks away from them, progressing into new territory, maybe even a shift in tone and pace. And, again, I’ll work on the middle until it does its job, which will be the heavy-lifting of the story, often incorporating the big twist or reveal that really needs to land. It won’t be perfect at this stage – far from it – but I won’t allow the baton to pass onto the final leg until the middle has basically achieved its aim.

By this point, I’ll know what the last leg needs to do. I’ll understand what ground is left to cover and what arcs needs to be resolved – things that seemed far away when I was at the starting line. And yes, I do know my metaphor is getting a little muddled(!) but, much like a relay, the last section of a book is often a sprint finish. My rate of writing will speed up, the story will accelerate, the chapters will shorten and the sentences will become tauter. There is no way I could write this leg before the other two. All the harder, slower work of the beginning and middle will have set me up to fly towards the end.

And then, after a rest, it’s back to the beginning. But this time I know the route. I’m familiar with the length and pace of each leg, and I can see, more clearly, how it all hangs together, how to smooth out the transitions and make the whole stronger than its parts.

But that’s just me, the way I work. There is more than one way to complete a race!

Contributed by: Helen Cooper