Book Notes: 2,000 to 10,000 by Rachel Aaron
This book is primarily for fiction writers, especially novelists.
Any writer will benefit from part one of the book, in which Rachel breaks down three key strategies for increasing your writing efficiency. However, this section comprises only a third of the book. The remainder showcases Rachel's best tips for planning and editing a novel with greater ease and speed.
As a writer, I have a rocky relationship with the concept of productivity. For me, it brings to mind the dangerous and unhealthy aspects of hustle culture that lead so many writers and creatives to feel that they are not enough.
Rachel reframes productivity as efficiency, a mindful switch that has helped me view productivity tips as a means of trimming the fat from my writing process. The point isn't to produce more for the sake of producing more; it's to avoid all the speed bumps that slow us down in the first place.
In retrospect, Rachel's three key efficiency strategies seem remarkably simple. Obvious, even. Yet I'm willing to bet that I'm not the only writer who has spent years too caught up in their own head to implement these ideas. Thanks to this book, I've finally done so — and they’ve made a world of difference in my process and productivity.
"Writing is a very personal journey, but that doesn’t mean it has to be a slow one."
“Writing is not a performance art, so don’t be afraid to let everything be a total broken mess for a while, if that’s what it takes to get your story right.”
“Characters are more than actors. In a good story, they are the engines whose desires push the plot forward.”
“I’m not a temperamental artist enslaved to the whims of her muse. I am a story architect building glittering cathedrals in the desert for all the world to marvel at.”
"Just like changing your lifestyle can help you lose a hundred pounds, changing the way you sit down to write can boost your words-per-hour in astonishing ways."
Rachel Aaron is a full-time author who, after giving birth, found herself with newly limited writing time and energy. Already behind on a deadline, Rachel set out to find a way to increase the efficiency with which she completed her creative work. As a result, she discovered three key strategies that helped her increase her daily drafting word count from 2,000 to 10,000 words:
Know what you're writing before you write it
Carve out more high-quality writing time
Ensure you're always enthusiastic about your work
Regardless of how much you're typically able to write or revise, putting Rachel's strategies into practice can help you double, if not triple or quadruple, your creative output. Let's take a look at each strategy in greater detail:
Strategy #1: Know what you're writing before you write it
The hardest work of writing is figuring out what to write next. Writers often make the mistake of trying to do this work — figuring out how to move their stories forward in meaningful and exciting ways — as they write.
This approach to writing greatly decreases efficiency because, in essence, you're multi-tasking — trying to both craft story and write story at the same time. This can become especially inefficient should you draft your way into dead-end plot lines that, ultimately, need to be cut from your story altogether.
"If you want to write faster, the first step is to know what you're writing before you write it," Rachel advises. "I'm not even talking about macro plot stuff— I mean working out the back and forth exchanges of an argument between characters, blocking out fights, jotting down fast descriptions."
You don't need to become a full-on plotter to figure out what you'll write before you write it. Simply taking five minutes to sketch out ideas before beginning the actual work of writing can make a world of difference.
Strategy #2: Carve out more high-quality writing time
To increase the quality of your writing time, you first need to collect data about the time you currently spend writing. Rachel advises tracking the following writing session data points for at least two months:
The time you start writing
The time you stop writing
How many words you write or revise
Where and when you wrote
After several months, analyze the data you collect. Ask yourself two key questions:
How long are your most efficient writing sessions?
When and where do you write most efficiently?
If you're like Rachel, then you might not reach peak writing efficiency unless you write for several hours. Alternatively, you might be able to produce a similar number of words per hour no matter how long your writing sessions.
By reviewing your data, you might also discover when and where you write best, the point at which your writing efficiency starts to wane, and the quantity of butt-in-chair time that leads to burnout the next day.
In any case, use this data to optimize your daily or weekly writing sessions.
Strategy #3: Ensure you're always enthusiastic about your work
After analyzing your writing session data, you'll likely discover that your most prolific writing days occur when you draft the scenes you're most excited to bring to life. By this same token, your writing efficiency will decrease when trying to write scenes that you find somewhat boring.
Not every scene will be the most exciting scene in the world. However, you should be able to drum up some enthusiasm for what you're about to write.
When you take five minutes before your writing session to figure out what you'll write next, pay special attention to the little details in the scene that you're pumped to write. Use those moments as guideposts to drive your drafting momentum.
If you can't conjure any enthusiasm for a scene, then it might be time to rework it. No matter how practical, boring scenes have no place in your novel.
When bad writing days crop up, view them as potential red flags. Don't beat yourself up or think there's something wrong with yourself. Instead, gently consider whether there's something amiss with your book that's undermining your enthusiasm for writing.
As Rachel writes, "If your goal is to become a faster writer, the single most efficient change you can make isn’t actually upping your daily word count, but eliminating the days where you are not writing."
How to Plot & Edit With Greater Efficiency
Nothing will help you figure out what to write next more effectively than planning. However, planning can look different for every writer.
For Rachel, planning looks (first and foremost) like jotting down every scrap of a story idea in a file called "Idea Bucket."
From there, Rachel decides which idea to write next by asking herself whether each idea is a project she really wants to invest her time in. She knows she's ready to start developing and writing an idea if it meets at least one of the following requirements:
I can't stop thinking about it
The idea practically writes itself
I can visualize the finished product
I can easily explain why people would want to read it
However, not all story ideas are worth writing. Most ideas can be transformed into a good book in the hands of a capable writer, but enthusiasm is key. "Your writing time is precious, often gained at the expense of other worthwhile activities. Don’t waste it on a book you don’t love."
To develop her novels, Rachel works through the following process:
Get down what you already know — put all of your current ideas for the story on the page to discover the gaps and holes you'll need to fill
Develop the basics — figure out the bare bones of your characters, plot, and setting, then pin down your story’s genre to avoid tonal mishaps
Fill in the holes — begin plotting your story in earnest, skipping around as necessary and asking "What happens next?" with your character goals and motivations in mind
Build a firm foundation — ensure you really feel like you can see your story in your mind's eye; make sure you can "taste" the book clearly
Make a timeline — noting the dates of important events and history will help you find and fix early plot holes and pacing mishaps
Write out who knows what and when — jot down a quick list to ensure your characters aren't acting on information they don't yet have
Memorize your story's particulars — study your character descriptions, important place names, and other details that might otherwise become frustrating edits post-first draft.
Write a scene list — break your plot down into scenes, then group them by chapter to ensure your story flows well and consistently ramps up dramatic tension
Do a boredom check — review your scene list to ensure there aren't any slow scenes or poor pacing that would kill your enthusiasm during the drafting process
No matter how much you plot and plan your story, it's likely to change dramatically as you write. This is perfectly natural and doesn't negate the importance of planning as best fits your process. "No one has all their good ideas at once, so don’t be afraid to let go and just write. Plotting exists to make your life easier, not harder."
What about crafting characters?
Rather than crafting specific character details, Rachel likes to allow her characters to develop naturally alongside her plot and story world.
Consider treating your characters as active participants who drive your plot forward rather than passengers on the rollercoaster that is your story. It doesn't hurt to nail down characters’ basics first, such as the following:
Name:
Age:
Physical Description:
I like:
I hate:
More than anything, I want:
However, your character's want — their goals and motivations — give them agency within the realm of your storytelling. Allow them to take the reins, harnessing that agency to tell you where your story should go next. Get to know your characters through this process.
"Writing is an active undertaking, not a passive one," writes Rachel. Rather than waiting upon the muse to strike, she intentionally sets forth to craft, draft, and revise incredible stories.
While there are no "real" rules for how to write a book, there are methods you'll likely want to follow to craft an engaging and commercially lucrative novel —and you're likely already using them.
Specifically, you're likely already structuring your story based on an understanding you've gleaned from the stories you've consumed. The most pervasive story structure is the Three-Act Structure, which looks as follows:
Act I — put your characters in a tree
Act II — light the tree on fire
Act III — get your characters out of the tree
Act 1 introduces your characters, world, and the beginning of your story's action. Act 2 is all the rising action that comprises the mountain that is your story (and which your characters must climb). Act 3 is the peak and resolution of all that action, in which the story’s mounting tension pays off and resolves.
The best writers are those who understand what they're doing when they sit down to write, who understand how stories tick and seek to craft stories that do the same.
As Rachel writes, "If you want your writing process to be fast and reliable, it’s not enough to just trust your feelings for what works. You need to know why it works and how it works if you ever want to make it work for you."
However, using structure doesn't mean killing your creative instincts. Trusting your gut isn't the same thing as being at its mercy. Use structure to craft your stories and your gut to identify where your story isn't up to shine.
Understanding structure will not only help you plan and draft your story faster; it will also help you edit more swiftly by avoiding plot issues and/or identifying them more quickly.
On a similar note, every scene in your novel should accomplish at least three things:
Advance the story
Reveal new information
Pull the reader forward
If you're struggling with an overlong plot, then consider where you might combine scenes — killing at least two birds with one stone — to make your scenes as powerful and purposeful as possible. Exploring this question even with a shorter novel can help you craft the best possible story.
Writing highly purposeful scenes can be trickier, which makes writing more inefficient. However, quality trumps quantity with storytelling any day. Don't be afraid to slow down when necessary to create your best possible work.
Many writers profess to hating editing, but this doesn't have to be the case.
Editing is writing, and if you like writing, then you can also like editing. Most writers just despise editing because it comes at the point in the process when you've already put a ton of energy into your book. You're tired, and often the work is harder, and you're just ready to be done.
However, it's important to remember that editing is a skill. The more you improve your ability to edit well, the less you'll hate the process.
When editing, first understand what you're trying to accomplish. You're no longer asking the question "What happens next?" Instead, ask how you can ensure that readers both understand and love what happens next.
To improve your editing efficiency, first consider what's wrong with your book. Remember, knowledge increases productivity.
Some problems will be obvious, but others will be more difficult to identify. To make the process easier, create three tools for yourself:
A scene map — recreate an overview of your story's scenes based on your first draft to identify plot and pacing issues
A timeline — recreate your story's timeline of events to further identify plot and pacing issues
A to-do list — organize every issue you uncover in a list, prioritizing the largest and most complex issues
When you're ready to edit, tackle your to-do list. Avoid working through your manuscript chronologically. Instead, work to resolve issues by complexity as prioritized on your to-do list.
Your story's biggest issues might span multiple scenes. If you edited your novel chronologically, then you'd struggle to effectively resolve your story's more complex issues. Working out of order actually boosts your editing efficiency.
After fixing all the issues on your to-do list, read through your book. At this point, your book is likely an unreadable mess, even if the plot and characters are great. Now's the time to line edit your work, polishing your prose and fixing uncorrected text to make the book readable.
When you're done, consider running the book by beta readers or your editor for additional feedback. Voila! Just like that, you've efficiently finished a brand new book. Congratulations, writer!
2,000 to 10,000 by Rachel Aaron
Feel like you're crawling through your story, struggling for each paragraph? Want to get more words per day without increasing the time you spend writing or sacrificing quality? It's not impossible. It's not even that hard. This is the story of how, with a few simple changes, Rachel Aaron boosted her daily writing from 2,000 words to over 10k a day — and you can, too.