The POS

It has been said (I thought by Nora Roberts, but I recently saw it attributed to another author) that you can’t edit a blank page. In other words, sit down and start writing the damned story!

If you’re a plotter like me, you might be tempted to not only plot the major turning points of your story, but every single scene. You might feel compelled to not only fill out your favorite character sheets, but then write pages of backstory about each of your main characters.

But if this is all you’re doing, you might just be putting off actually sitting down and writing the actual story — you know, scenes, description, dialogue, action…

Don’t worry if what you write isn’t perfect. Your words are not set in stone. You won’t even have to retype the entire chapter after you’ve made some changes like authors did when all they had was a typewriter.

The first draft of nearly every book — even Nora Roberts’, who has literally written hundreds of books — is what is known as the POS (pile of shit). This is fine. Some would argue that this is good.

You need to write the story so that you know what you have and can fix it. You need to put in backstory. But is there too much? You can take it out later and sprinkle bits and pieces in elsewhere. You need to write actual dialogue — both internal and external — in order to truly bring your characters…