Back by Popular Demand: Words on the Page with editor Joel Brigham

Joel Brigham runs Brigham Editorial (developmental edits, manuscript critiques, query help), teaches high school English in Illinois, and is an editor for RevPit — a community that gives away free developmental edits each spring.

REVPIT

•    Free developmental editing contest — editors (not authors) mentor selected writers through full drafts

•    Applications open April, winners announced early May; ~14–15 editors participate

•    Year-round mini-event: 10 Queries — public feedback on first 5 pages + query letters

THE FIRST DRAFT

•    One goal: words on the page. Momentum beats perfection — always

•    Psychology backs this up: Goal Gradient Effect, Zeigarnik Effect, and Commitment Principle all support just keeping going

•    Comparing your messy first draft to your last polished book is a trap — every published book started the same way

5 DRAFTING HINDRANCES

•    Starting slow — avoid waking-up scenes, mirror descriptions, dream openers. Try dropping into the middle of something (*in medias res*)

•    Perfectionism — editing as you go wastes time on scenes that may not survive. Grammar is the last step

•    Weak character foundation — know their goal, fear, flaw, and wound as early as possible

•    No tension — even “everyday life” chapters before the inciting incident need friction, stakes, or a ticking clock

•    Info dumping — no backstory or flashbacks in chapters 1–2. Backstory is a breadcrumb, not a full loaf

FOR DISCOVERY / PANTSER WRITERS

•    Check in every 15–20k words — assess without forcing rigid plot beats

•    By 20k: your character should have a clear want and be on the book’s core journey

•    Made a change mid-draft? Drop a note and keep writing forward as if it’s always been that way — don’t stop to rewrite

LINKS

Joel’s services: brighameditorial.com  •  RevPit: reviseresub.com  •  Show notes: writerswithwrinkles.net

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

Hey friends, Beth here. I'm popping in with a quick note before we get into today's episode — this is a re-release of one of our favorites, and if you're just discovering it, perfect timing. It's summer, and a lot of you have told us you've got writing goals on deck for the next few months. So we thought this was the right moment to bring back our conversation with developmental editor Joel Brigham.

Joel is the editor behind Brigham Editorial, a RevPit editor, and honestly one of the most practical, encouraging voices we've had on the show. In this episode, he walks us through what a first draft is actually for, the biggest momentum killers he sees in early drafts, and his best advice for discovery writers who want to make real progress without losing their process.

If you've been staring at a blank page or circling chapter one for a while, this one's for you. Okay — here's the episode.

BETH MCMULLEN

Hi, friends. I'm Beth McMullen. And I'm Lisa Schmidt. And we're the co -hosts of Writers with Wrinkles. This is Season 4, Episode 13, and today we're excited to welcome Joel Brigham to the show. Joel is the editor behind Brigham Editorial, where he provides developmental edits, manuscript critiques, and query package help. He's the author of multiple novels and has been teaching English in Central Illinois for over 21 years. He's an editor for RevPit, a writing community that provides writer advice and once a year gives away free developmental edits. So welcome, Joel. Thank you so much for being here. We are excited to chat today.

JOEL BRIGHAM

I'm so excited to be here.

LISA SCHMID

So I first heard about you or discovered you when I was listening to The Middle Grade Matters. And you had a podcast with Shannon Balloon, who's the host over there, who is wonderful. I just love her to pieces. And I always say this every time I talk about her. She has got a voice like butter. She has a voice made for radio and podcasting. It's so soothing. Anyway, you did a really good podcast about the six things every story needs to succeed. And I was listening to that on a walk. And the whole time I was listening to it, I was kind of going through the checklist on my current manuscript. I'm like, do I have this? Do I have that? And at the same time, I was like, we've got to get Joel on our show. So I messaged Shannon. I'm like, do you care if we poach your guest?

LISA SCHMID

And she graciously agreed. So anyway, here you are. And we're so grateful that you've agreed to come on the podcast because we want to pick your brain about all things. grafting today. But before we do that, tell us a little bit about RevPit, because I've heard about it for years and never really quite understood what it's all about.

JOEL BRIGHAM

Yeah, so I don't know how long your listeners have been kind of in the, you know, chronically online writing community, but, you know, there was a time there, kind of the golden age of Twitter, where there were a lot of kind of online contests where agents would kind of... you know, lurk and like things. And I know those still exist, but they aren't the hullabaloo they used to be. So if you've been around for a while, like you're probably familiar with maybe a contest like Pitch Wars, maybe like author mentor match or something like that. Rev Pit is kind of similar to that. But the big difference is that in Pitch Wars, which I was a Pitch Wars mentor in its final year as well. Pitch Wars is more kind of authors mentoring. you know up and coming authors and then there's this big showcase and agents come and kind of fight over who's going to get what you know like you know the the children of blood and bone was a pitch wars book you know there can be big you know to do about all that whereas rev pit we're still giving away that that critique it's not even sure it's mentorship it's it's more kind of like a book coaching for free where it's a developmental editor who's giving it away so You know, we're not promising the access to agents that Pitch Wars used to promise before it folded. And some of the other contests kind of tend to focus on. We're really looking more at, you know, we offer services to help writers be better at what they do. We want them to get their stories in optimal condition. And, you know, frankly, as the developmental editor, as the one people that are coming to me, I love all of my writers the same way we all love all of our children equally. But it's nice once a year to be able to pick. I get to pick what I work on, you know? So I get to kind of choose something that sounds really fun. Again, not that my other stuff isn't fun. It's just I get to pick it, right? It's custom made for me. So I pick an author and we work together and do a couple drafts. There is a showcase, but it's not like Pitch Wars where you have to participate. My author I chose. gosh about a month ago already you know we've already agreed we're not going to be ready for this showcase but she'll get some some query materials ready and we'll we'll get it right as we'll discuss this but with drafting especially if you're not a published author yet and you don't have a deadline it's more important to do it right than it is to do it fast so that's kind of where we are with her this is my third year as a rev pit you know editor and my first two got agents And my winner from last year just got a two book deal with a big four publisher for her book. I know it was such a good book. So I've had some success with my authors there. And this young woman I'm working with now has a really neat middle grade fantasy book that I'm just in love with and just loads of potential. So it's cool that we're not picking the ones that are closest to making it. We're picking the ones that have the most promise. The ones that we have a vision or a skill set to kind of help them get over the hump. And we're putting those authors in the best position possible to, you know, make Asian eyeballs stick to it and hopefully make an offer. So it's a good deal. All like 14 or 15 editors each year. All of them are super qualified. They're all wonderful people. We're all kind of in the same sort of reasonable price range. None of us charge as much as we should. So it's a great, helpful. community that just works great i think for writers even those who don't win they make connections they learn things it's just a it's a neat little community what is the timing for this what time of year are you usually doing this just so our listeners who maybe want to put it on the calendar for future participation yeah we do the giveaway the big giveaway in the spring usually usually around april is when everybody applies and then there's

BETH MCMULLEN

is the timing for this what time of year are you usually doing this just so our listeners who maybe want to put it on the calendar for future participation

JOEL BRIGHAM

we do the giveaway the big giveaway in the spring usually usually around april is when everybody applies and then there's We have, we call them first readers. There's kind of like a group of volunteers who will read bits of books and kind of score them to give us some data before we dig in. And then we have a, like a three week window to kind of consider the books that have been submitted to us. You know, we'll, we'll narrow them down the same way agents narrow them down, you know, log line and pitch and query. And is the word count appropriate for the genre? And, you know, are the first pages engaging and all that same stuff agents look for. We kind of do, and we get it narrowed down, and we have a little Slack channel, and then we fight over who's going to get what. And it's very, very, you know, very pleasant, you know, congenial way. And then usually, like in about early May, we make the announcements of who the winners were. So that's the main contest. There are some other kind of mini events throughout the year. We do something called 10 Queries, where people submit their first five pages in their query letters, and we will randomly get assigned 10 of them. We don't pick them, they get assigned to us. And we give very general feedback about the query and the pages in like a thread on Blue Sky or something. And then the people who submitted have a fun time trying to guess which one was theirs. But the feedback is geared toward being helpful for everybody. So if I get a query letter that's way too long and I'm like, oh my gosh, this query is about 150 words too long. I like to get them at about 300 words if we can. That helps everybody. And it's fun to kind of guess if yours got picked. So we do a few of those over the course of the year as well. But yeah, the main contest is in the spring.

BETH MCMULLEN

All right. That sounds so interesting. That's the sort of thing that hopefully people will make a note about. Because, I mean, this stuff is still going on. Like you said, it's not going on quite at the level it used to when Twitter was so popular and everybody could be found there. But stuff is still out there. And it's worth following up on if you think it would be. helpful to your writing. So speaking of writing, let's jump into these questions. We have some good ones for you. The first one, and actually I'm really curious how you're going to answer this as well. How do you define the purpose of a first draft and what should writers not worry about at that stage?

JOEL BRIGHAM

Well, you're asking this question because the types of things that writers worry about during the first draft. is as diverse as the colors and the prism of the rainbow. Writers find the most amazing things to worry about in a first draft. For me, my philosophy for this has always been, and I wrote this down in my notes in all capital letters, words on the page, period. That's the purpose, is to get a finished draft. So you mentioned that I'm a high school teacher and have been for 21 years. I have a lot of kids. who, you know, these kids end up growing to be adults who like to write books to sometimes, right? Who are frozen by insecurity or, you know, uncertainty if they're doing it right or if it's going to go anywhere or be worth their time or am I even good enough? And all those things are going through a writer's mind when they're doing this. And with my kiddos, when they're writing essays, they're like, I don't even know what to write about, you know? And where do I even start with this? And I tell them, just like vomit on the page like put every little word in whatever kind of garbage order you want because you know once we've collected the raw materials like it's going to look like a big bucket of slop but like then we can start taking that mud and and putting it in a general shape of the sculpture you want it to be and then we can kind of start chiseling away those little details and you know it takes time but but eventually we get this beautiful piece of art at the end and the same thing is true for authors it's especially true for authors because authors would love to write multiple drafts. And my high schoolers would love to write one draft and turn it in and never look at it again, right? So that's a big difference. So words on the page for me is really important. And I'm a big, I'm super into like how human psychology plays into the process of writing and reading for that matter too. And there are some things where it's just been proven that the human brain loves momentum. There's something called the Zeidneric effect, where people, once they've started a task, they remember it more than an unstarted or a completed task because there's the mental tension of having something left unfinished. We feel that, right? So if we're in progress, we feel that subconscious kind of tension. There's something called the goal gradient effect. People have a tendency to exert more effort into something as they get closer. to the end of our goal right if our rough draft goal is 70 000 words and we're just slogging through to get to like 10 12 15 18 and it's just it's like we're walking through mud but then we get to 50 and it's like we don't see our family for for three weeks because we're just so in it and we're charging to that finish line there's there's something there and then there's something called the commitment and consistency principle whereas once people commit to doing something even in a small way they're more likely to act consistently with that commitment. And what that means is, you know, if you would like to lose weight and you keep it to yourself versus if you state on Facebook, hey, everybody, I'm going to lose weight, please hold me accountable. You've stated it now publicly. This is part of your identity. We want to finish. So all these things, you know, I think lend credence to the idea that momentum is what gets us done and we want to be done. We don't need to be good yet with a rough draft, right? We're going to have to be good eventually. Agents and publishers, they want good stuff. But we don't have to be good in a rough draft. It's going to be so bad, and you're going to hate it so much. John Green's first draft of The Fault in Our Stars had a car chase and a murder -suicide at the end. It was insane. That's not where the book obviously ended up. But no one ever saw that draft, right? And no one ever has to see... this draft no one sees what you write until you decide it's ready for for beta readers but being done with a draft now allows you to get it into its right form you've gathered all the all the raw materials you're ready to kind of put this together so i i just think that it's so much easier to you know conceive what a book you know can and should be once you got a full draft to look at even if it's garbage right and frankly a lot of writers will finish the draft and say that was garbage And then they'll put it away for a week or two and come back to it and go, you know what? This is better than I actually remember it being. And we're kind of stunned by how much better it is. It's infuriating when writers write and they go, oh, this is bad. And they hit delete. And I'm like, oh my God, sleep on it first. Like, just sleep on it, you know? So being done for me, get words on the page. That should be a writer's primary goal when they're drafting. Be done.

BETH MCMULLEN

I seriously feel like we should all have that tattooed on our foreheads because it's so, and it's, it's really hard to convince new writers that it is okay to be really bad. Like it's really fine to just, like you said, puke it all out there and deal with fixing it later. Like you can't edit a blank page. If it's blank, you've got nothing to work with, but I think it's hard. It's,

JOEL BRIGHAM

really fine

BETH MCMULLEN

I think it's hard. It's, you know. I've written a lot of books and I still have that moment where I'm like, I should go back and fix that chapter. And then I'm like, no, that chapter will still suck tomorrow. So I'm leaving it and moving on.

JOEL BRIGHAM

Well, you know, what's especially tough is that, you know, when you have written a book before and you're writing a new book, you are sort of subconsciously comparing the first draft of your new book to the final draft of the book you just finished. Like you've just seen what wonderful work you're capable of. And now here's this raw. you know, incomplete and you can't help it. You're not even like comparing yourself to John Green. You're comparing yourself to you from two months ago, who was way better at this than you appear to be now. Right. It's that comparison. I mean, we, we,

JOEL BRIGHAM

when we buy books, you know, we are with our wallets and our pocketbooks. We are showing that we value the result and we never get to see the process. Listen to podcasts like this and you do some little writing on your own, you get. introduced to that and you realize how much goes into it but most people who are just starting they don't understand what the process is and how messy it is and how private it can be so to compare yourself to not only like who you used to be but all these books that you've read and loved you're thinking why is it my book as good as that book it's because their book looked like your book when they started but they have professional editors and they have gone through multiple drafts and they've made friends who are writers who are beta readers and they've talked i mean they've done they've done the work this no one said writing books was supposed to be a one draft thing that's not how this works so yeah the comparison i think kills a lot of people's you get that imposter syndrome a little bit when you're making unfair comparisons it's interesting because

LISA SCHMID

interesting because When you finish, you said something about when you compare yourself to what you've just written. And I found, and I hear this all the time, that you've finished a book, you've gone through all the revisions and the editing and dah, dah, dah. And then you take a little break and then you start a new book. And it's all of a sudden, it's like, I've forgotten how to write. You know what I mean? It's like, it's been so long since I've drafted. I'm like, I just don't even know how to write anymore. So this is. One of the reasons why I'm so excited to have you on is because this is all for me. This is a little therapy slash class for me to help me get back to drafting.

JOEL BRIGHAM

mean? It's

LISA SCHMID

little therapy slash class for me to help me get back to drafting. So I'm going to, a lot of the questions that we came up with, it's like, well, this is what I want to know. Cause I'm like, I'm struggling right now.

JOEL BRIGHAM

It's, it's something I have found that, you know, I am very uncomfortable talking about myself as a person. I hate it. But it's a niche that I've been able to kind of find for myself where lots of qualified people can give you feedback on your writing. But I've always kind of prided myself as kind of a cheerleader and a pep talker. And when we're in this process and considering how lonely it really is, and we never know how we're going to measure up and where we're at and how this stands. But to have someone who's reminding you that you can get there, that it's okay that it's bad right now. We need that little Jiminy cricket in our ear. And that's been my niche is just, you know, how can we cheer people on and keep them getting words on the page? Because like all things we work our butts off at, you know, when the end result is good, we are so proud of ourselves. But there's going to be a lot of like not feeling proud of ourselves along the way to get there. It's just how hard things go. Yeah.

LISA SCHMID

Well, that's a good point to jump off into the next question, because this is one of the things I've been wondering, is what should the writer figure out before they start writing? Plot, characters, theme, or all? Is there any brilliant recommendation you have for us who are struggling right now with that draft?

JOEL BRIGHAM

Okay, I'm going to give you the right answer, and then I'm going to give you the nuanced answer, okay? The right answer is that... For me to say where to start to be that prescriptive would kind of go against really every artistic instinct that I think some authors have. They don't want to be told to start with this or that or the other thing. It's possible to start with zero of those things. I've seen books start with just an image or a conversation. that they have in their head before they've got anything else, a setting or, you know, it's something that sets off kind of the idea. And it's important, I think, to note that you actually don't have to know where you're going when you start. I have had a lot of writing exercises where we start with something and then even if we have the idea, even if we have the character or the plot or the theme, we write 15 ,000 words and then all of a sudden it's something different anyway. It'll change on us, you know, against our will. So the correct answer is that there's no good way to start. There's no like better way than the other. Now that said, here's the nuanced answer, because what you're looking for when you ask that is what are the pros and cons maybe of starting with each of these things? Is there a benefit to starting with character versus kind of something else? Right. And so I would say when I get ideas and I'm not sure how this works for you ladies, but when I get ideas, it's sort of a bolt of, of lightning and I get butterflies in my stomach. And I lay a bed at wake at night, churning through what it could be. And it doesn't, I can't set it aside. It doesn't go away. I can't, it's there, you know? And oftentimes that is a concept that's going to be really fun to write, or it's a character that is unexpected in some kind of way, or it is a... world building thing that I'm really excited about, or it is a theme, right? Maybe I wrote a book before we hopped on it. I told you ladies that I run a girls softball league in my community. I wrote a softball book and I didn't know what I wanted to write, but I knew that I wanted to be about those conversations that dads have with their daughters in the car on the way home from a bad game and how that's everything. and in girls sports is that what happens in that car on the way home is everything and i had no idea where i wanted to go with that and that's where i started right so it can start with any of these i will say depending on what you write having a little bit of a game plan in one of these areas first is going to make writing easier from the get -go right so i think for example if you're writing fantasy or science fiction i think having the world kind of not not Not the Bible of the world, but a sense of the world and the magic or the technology, where we're going to be and operate and exist. That's a great place to start. When you think about, there's a book by M .T. Anderson called Feed, where it's about these teenagers and we don't have cell phones anymore. The cell phones are a chip that's implanted in their head. And all the functionality of a cell phone, they can just think it into existence, right? That's the technology. And you can imagine, your brain's probably going crazy right now with all the things that could go wrong with that, right? You know, so in a science fiction or a fantasy, with fantasy, right? Knowing that, and I'm not sure how much your readers are aware of this, but about 70 % of books that are submitted to agents are fantasy. It is a very popular genre. It sells the most, which means the most people like it, which means the most people write it. So having a fantasy world that... is going to stand out or have some kind of unique twist to it is important it can't just be a derivative of tolkien or something like that it has to have some kind of nuance or twist that makes it pardon me unique so for sci -fi and fantasy or like dystopia i think like the world is a good place to start right if you're doing literary book club you know romance i think character is a good place to start with those you know literary fiction book club fiction those are so you know, character driven, those plots can be a little quieter. It's about where the character starts and where they end up. And with romance, you know, I think it's important to have love interests that not only push and pull on each other, but that compliment each other very well. It's, it's ideal to have, you know, one, one love interest who is, you know, very, very shy, but very, very smart. And then one love interest who's very outgoing and dumber than a bag of hammers. Like that makes for great. You know, to start with kind of that character, that's where you start there. And with theme, like, I don't know, like sometimes you just start with what you want to say. That could apply to any genre. Knowing what you want to say, for me, it's, I'll go back to the softball example, is, you know, what happens on that car ride home between fathers and their daughters after a bad game? I ended up writing about a girl who, you know, faked an injury just to not have to deal with her dad anymore. And that creates all this distance between her dad and then all the girls on her team find out she's like an all -state pitcher and she's missing important games that they're losing because she's faking an injury. And then it comes and everything goes down the tubes for her. That all came out of that theme idea. So whatever you're starting with, I think most of us have some kind of nugget or kernel. But I think once you have that nugget or kernel, depending on whether you are a pantser or a plotter. You kind of go from there. You know, if you're a plotter, maybe you're thinking, what are some ideas for how I could explore this theme? Or what are some ideas for what would make this character absolutely miserable? What are some ideas for a setting that would be really unique or would stand out in a slush pile of a lot of stuff that looks all the same? And you plan it, right? But if you're a pantser, you get that vibe and you go and you find it as you go. It's very common for pantsers to write. you know, 8 ,000, 10 ,000, 20 ,000 words before they find it. And then they scrap it and then they start because now they've got it. So not everyone's a planner, not everyone's a discovery writer, but most people start with something, which I think is good, but not necessary. So I have no idea if any of that was helpful. Starting is really hard, but ultimately just starting, same thing as that first question, getting some words down and seeing where it takes you. Instead of overthinking, is the idea good? Is this theme going to work? Is my world building going to be interesting? You can think about it all you want. At some point, you got to put it on the page and see how it plays. So, you know, I don't know. Feel free to ask a follow -up question. That's kind of my general sense on that.

BETH MCMULLEN

I am going to now going forward from this day on call myself a discovery writer because that's nicer than a pantser. I'm a hundred percent. I'm that 20 ,000. Oh, now I'm going to start over kind of a gal. The other thing that I was thinking about was that you said it's the spark or the idea or the kernel that stays with you that you can't get out of your head, which I think is really important for people to, to be aware of, because I mean, I have a thousand, what I say are great ideas every, Every month. And it's only the ones that stick over time that I am going to commit to because like we've been saying, this is a long, lonely process. So you want to love that idea.

BETH MCMULLEN

Yeah, I think there's two interesting things to think about in there. And also, speaking about those early drafts that you're jumping into and maybe you have a lot of experience and maybe you don't. What are some of the things that you see that you would say are the biggest mistakes writers consistently make in early drafts? Things that you see over and over again where you can say, okay, everybody don't do this. If you can, if there's something.

JOEL BRIGHAM

if there's something. I could do an hour on this. I'll try and like keep it brief.

BETH MCMULLEN

No, no, no. This is, I think, actually super important. And it's the kind of thing that our listeners. Like to write down and be like, okay, now I have a list and that's always helpful. So yeah, go for it.

JOEL BRIGHAM

no,

JOEL BRIGHAM

the kind of

JOEL BRIGHAM

okay, now

JOEL BRIGHAM

So, I mean, we can look at this in terms of, you know what, let's look at this in terms of what's going to give us the best opportunity and the best chances to actually finish a first draft. Like when we say mistakes, I don't look at that in terms of like mistakes in terms of the story is going to suffer as a result or. Asians aren't going to pick up your thing as a result or whatever. Those types of things are out of our control,

JOEL BRIGHAM

of our control, right? But the things that are in our control are what can help us get all the way through a draft and help us get done. So these are mistakes I see in drafting that I think kind of kill momentum and kill progress for authors. So I will break these down. Now, I will say this. A little caveat here is that when we, the word like mistake comes with so much, it's like pantser versus discovery draft, right? You know, a mistake, let's call them maybe like hindrances or I don't know. There's a, there's a more, a less, I don't know. Mistake just makes it feel like we've done something wrong and you literally can't do anything wrong in a first draft. It's where we're finding things, right? So all this is just, these are hindrances. These are momentum killers, right? So the first one is starting slow or starting in the wrong place. And there are a few different ways this could be an issue. The most common that I see are people who start with kind of those cliche openings that we've seen done a million times. And this is by no means all of them, but the ones I see most are people starting in the morning when they're waking up. That's like first scene, first chapter. It's a bright day. And they look in the mirror. That's looking in the mirror. It's second cliche. And they describe what eye color they have and what their hair looks like in the mirror. Those are not super great. I see also a lot of openings where, you know, something horrible is happening, but it was all just a dream in that opening scene or like a vision or something. It's kind of a fake out that tends to kind of not play super well. A lot of those like on the road or traveling somewhere scenes to start, we kind of want to avoid those. And then like starting with the straight up description of the weather or the setting, I've seen that where we get three or four paragraphs in and I haven't met the character yet. So I've seen those in early drafts. Those are kind of the cliche openings. Knowing what those are and just kind of challenging yourself to start someplace other than those options is going to help you build more momentum right out of the gate. Because if you're starting with those cliches, it's probably because you're very familiar with that type of storytelling, which means your next bit of storytelling probably is going to be very similar to what. You know, readers expect to, and there's a dance between expectation and subverting expectations, but cliches are not the good way to do that, especially early on. So how do we avoid starting slow? How do we like engage ourselves in our writing right away? My favorite approach is end media rest. That is a fancy way of saying starting in the middle. So starting in the middle of something. So for my, I'll use my softball book again. You know, instead of like showing the game, the end of the game, the getting in the car, whatever, it starts in the middle of the car ride on the way home. In the middle of that conversation, you know, we can kind of fill in some gaps and start there. You know, starting with some small task or tension or a little bit of mystery or a little bit of unfairness. There's all these ways to kind of start in just the middle of something that helps us jump off really good. try and give your character in that first scene, like when you're just starting to write, try and give them a little like problem or conundrum to solve. Even if it's like super small, you know, she has some chore to complete that she's never completed before. And she's nervous. She's going to break the farm equipment because she's never done this by herself or something. And so that's not, you know, the, the big conflict of the book, but it's a little bit of, of, of a problem and seeing how that character. deals with that problem right away can already kind of tell our readers what the baseline character you know strengths and shortcomings and misbeliefs are going to be that's a good way to do it i like when there's some stakes right away something that if if i can't get this done in this amount of time or something this good thing or bad thing will happen i like that a little bit of disorientation can be kind of fun i was

JOEL BRIGHAM

little bit of disorientation can be kind of fun i was Think of it as kind of the act of seduction. So, you know, you're starting with a lead that is purposefully a little bit confusing, but not in a frustrating way in a, what the hell is this writer talking about? I have to keep reading to find out kind of way. Those are kind of fun little, you know, nuggets to start with. And, you know, in the meantime, like think about the first chapters that you've read and that you've loved, you know, what works in those. Those are kind of my best tips to like avoid starting slow or starting in. the wrong place. Okay. And I say all of this because we're going to get to the good parts. We always, you know, just keep reading. It gets good about page like 35, you know, in revision, eventually we have to clean that up. Agents are not going to wait for the good part. Readers aren't going to wait for the good part. It needs to be good right away. So drafting with those things in mind will make it easier for you to jump off your revisions a lot more quickly. So that's, that's. Mistake number one. So we'll start there. Two, as being too much of a perfectionist, I have authors who edit, proofread, and revise as they go. Lisa, are you hiding from me? Stop it. I see you. Okay. Yeah, yeah. That happens a lot where we can't, I say we, there are authors who can't move on from a scene until they feel like that scene is in very good shape. And then we kind of move on. And the reason why I don't love that in an early draft is because you're putting all this extra time into perfecting a scene that may or may not end up being in the final book. So we could have used that time and written an extra 2 ,000 words and been that much closer to having our first draft done. But we were fiddling with verb choices. get rid of our LYs and that kind of stuff, right? So again, progress over perfection is always the goal in a rough draft. Plus, you know, they call it analysis paralysis for a reason. We think and we think and we think and it just shuts us down and it keeps us from making any forward progress. You know, let your brain cook. Like, get in that flow, get in that zone and just keep moving forward. It's so hard to do, but like, think of it as like, you know, I don't know. When your teacher, if you're old enough, like me, this is why there's wrinkles, right? We've all got wrinkles, I'm sure. You remember like, you know, in class, like the teacher would give you like notes and they kind of cover it on the overhead and give you a little bit of time. So you couldn't see what was going on. Imagine your rough draft is kind of like that in reverse, right? Like what you've written, we don't get to see it. And so we're done. It's like a little gift when we're done to see what I wrote. Block it out of your mind. Move forward. Keep going. Perfectionism is going to slow you down now. Who likes to be perfectionists? Or who likes to be... Nope.

JOEL BRIGHAM

People who like to be perfectionists are people who typically like to exert control in other aspects of their lives. This is me. This is my trauma response to things that happened to me when I was very little. I control my environment. I plan things to a T, to the minute. I mean, this works for me. This is my defense mechanism. But man, it took a long time for me to be able to let go. of that control when I was writing. If you want to control every step of the process, again, you are killing your momentum. You are stressing yourself out. There is so much freedom in knowing that what you've written is there and I can take it or leave it later. If you're a control person, the control is that word count going up, right? That's your goal. I'm going to hit this word count this week. That's your control is those goals, not the getting everything perfect that I've already written. So if you can kind of like rewire yourself a little bit to not, not feel like that, then that's okay. Also grammar does not matter in the early drafts. You know, you don't have to proofread yet. That's proofreading is literally the last step of the process. If we're going to use like getting ready for prom as, as a, as a metaphor here, like proofreading is flipping the corsage onto your wrist. Once your date comes to pick you up, like that's the last thing we do. So it's okay if it's a mess grammatically. You know, we can use Grammarly or, you know, whatever to clean it up later. It'll be just fine. So that is a big thing. It's just being too much of a perfectionist can be problematic and kind of slow us down. The third one that can slow us down is not really knowing your main character. So we said what's important to start with. I, again, it's okay to discover as you go. And I have, I know we're going to talk about tips for discovery draft writers here in a little bit, but. Once we have a sense of our main character, it is so much easier to write. That character has to have a goal. That character has to want something more than anything in the whole wide world. That character has to be afraid of something. That character has to have a misbelief about themselves that they've internalized. Once we know all that stuff, once we know what they want so, so bad, and once we know what's keeping them from getting it. stories are a lot easier to write. So I always, you know, my list is like, if you can do this, once you have a sense of your character as early as you can in the process, even if you are a pantser, jot down what your character's strength is, what's their flaw, what are their hopes and dreams, what is their emotional wound or trauma, what's the thing that made them this way, right? And then a little bit of backstory. So there's character profiles aplenty on the internet. You can have ChatGPT make a little character profile for you that you can fill out yourself, give you some prompts. To me, that is an ethical way to use ChatGPT, is to create a personalized character profile that you can fill out yourself. Once you know your character, it's so much easier to write. I read a lot of early drafts where the character is nothing. They are nobody. They are observing. They are not in the action. There's not much personality there. There's no goals. There's no motivations. They're just kind of there. And we're getting almost like a third -person narration. Everything just tastes like very bland vanilla, and knowing your character can make a big difference there. My fourth kind of hindrance is neglecting conflict and tension. I have so many authors who want to write the first chapter, first couple of chapters, easy. Because the bad thing hasn't happened yet. Like, authors are told, this is advice that I got very early on that I also misinterpreted, that we are supposed to tell a little bit about our character's everyday life before we upturn their everyday life with our inciting incident, right? But that does not mean that those first chapters, our everyday life stuff, should be boring. There has to be some conflict, some tension. Like, let's see this kid and their parent. not getting along or let's see this kid wanting to to be part of something but being excluded like let's see this kid trying to plant their garden but the freaking squirrels shoot it all up again or whatever like some kind of i mean there's something there that creates that conflict or tension right away you know and we can we can do it that way it also helps to add a a ticking clock two early chapters you know i have to to be here by this time so we're in a hurry and there's a deadline to meet and we're invested very early on in that you also can like introduce kind of like unanswered questions that have are going to have be kind of cryptic that there's a sense that those will be answered later those are kind of fun little crumbs to leave to and then the last one and this is the one that is the most common i see this I mean, I read a lot of first 10 -page feedback for some of the writers' conferences that I work for. It is info dumping. It is stage setting. It is context building. It is backstory. In our early drafts, we include this for us. We don't know who these people are yet. We don't know this world yet. We don't know anything yet. So we're writing all these, like, you know, we have our little... scene in their everyday life where the squirrels keep eating their berries out of the garden or whatever. And then we break away from this scene for four paragraphs to explain, you know, that she was adopted and that she came from, and that she used to live here. And then her best friend is gone for the summer. And then we come back to the squirrels and the strawberries. And then we break it up. Oh, and mom did this. And mom came from here. And mom always struggled with drug addiction. And these kind of like explanations are not good for two reasons. One.

JOEL BRIGHAM

You don't have to give the reader everything in the first chapter. You have a whole book to sprinkle all these. Mom's a drug addict? Are you kidding me? That is interesting. That could be a whole discovery chapter by itself later. Oh, this kid's adopted? That's interesting. We can reveal that way later. Use these little interesting nuggets of backstory to fill in those little saggy areas in the middle of books that are so hard to write anyway. So one, we don't need everything up front. Two, a little disorientation is good. We don't want the reader to feel comfortable, like they have everything they need to scoot through this story unharmed. We want them to feel kind of confused because they want to turn pages to keep reading and find out how this is going to be solved. But most importantly, again, this is the psychology thing that I really like, is this idea of flow. The best books that we read are the ones where we forget that we're reading. And our eyes kind of go foggy for a second. We kind of blink and look up and an hour and a half has gone by. We're like, oh my God, I have to cook dinner? Or we're in bed and we're like, one more chapter, it's getting late. And then we read and we keep saying, one more chapter, one more chapter, one more chapter until it's two in the morning. That is a biological phenomenon called flow, where we are in something so deeply that everything else is shut up. This can happen when you're writing too, right? Where you just get so in the zone that... It doesn't matter what's going on around you, you're in it, and then two hours have gone by. If we are breaking away from that opening scene, which is our chance to attach to this character, it's our chance to see what their flaws and their strengths and their wounds are. If we're breaking away to explain things, we are keeping our reader from losing themselves in the story. We are losing that flow. So we want to say, I always say no info dumps, no flashbacks, no backstory. in chapter one and preferably not chapter two and if you can make it work for chapter three give it a shot because those things are breadcrumbs that is not the whole loaf at the beginning of the meal you know we don't want that so those are i know i told you i could do an hour i probably did what 20 minutes or something on that but those are the big ones like you know starting in the wrong place or too slow being too much of a perfectionist not really knowing your main character neglecting conflict intention and then of course too much info dump too much backstory in those early pages.

LISA SCHMID

That is a lot. And that is, I can't, you answered so many of our questions that we were going to ask next. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to ask you the big question that is burning in my little brain because I am a pantser. You've probably figured that out. You're a discovery writer.

BETH MCMULLEN

out. You're a discovery writer. Come on, get with me on this. We are changing the way we look at this. Discovery is more fun than somebody who's, you know, flying by the seat of their pants, I think.

LISA SCHMID

Well, okay. With that in mind, I am a discovery writer. And right now I've... So I literally am like stuck on the first chapter. And it's one of those things where it's like, I would love to be a fast drafter, but I literally figure it out chapter by chapter. You know, I'll finish a chapter and then it has, sometimes I know exactly where I'm going in the next chapter, but it could be a week, you know, after I finish the next chapter, it's like, I don't know where I'm going, but it always seems to work out. So I have no idea how to fast draft when I'm. discovering as I go. What is your biggest advice for all those discovery writers out there who are wringing their hands right now?

BETH MCMULLEN

seems to

LISA SCHMID

those discovery writers out there who are wringing their hands right now?

JOEL BRIGHAM

I will say that when we pants a book, when we are writing a discovery draft, I've done a lot of full book developmental edits and I've gotten very good at knowing who my discovery draft writers are and who my plotters are because the pants drafts are going to require a lot more revision. Right. You know, there, there are such thing as story beats and story beats have flexibility. I know save the cat makes it sound like you have to have things in exactly the right percentage all the time. You don't, but there are, I kind of call them like mile marker story beats that are kind of important. You know, the big ones being the inciting incident, kind of the midpoint turn. And then the all hope is lost kind of moment that takes us from act two to act three, or if we're doing a four act from act three to act four. Those are the big ones. And I think my first step with discovery draft writers is to look at what they've written. They always have those things in there, but they're never anywhere near where they're supposed to be in the book, which means we're going to be condensing some part of the book and we're going to be writing more chunks of the other book. I think knowing that if you are a discovery draft writer, your revision process is probably going to be longer than if you plotted it. But don't be disheartened by that, because on the other side of that is there are a lot of plotters who, you know, have spreadsheets and percentages and page numbers. And it's all, you know, and you read it and it feels very formulaic and predictable. I mean, the beauty of the discovery draft is, you know, in life, we don't get to plan what happens to us. We have to live. Sometimes bad things happen that we don't expect, and then we have to react and respond. And that is what is so fascinating about human beings, is none of us respond the same way to these horrible things. And so in these pants drafts, we're able to create more of those opportunities, I think, than plotters do. So it's important to know that there's kind of pros and cons to both. My solution for pantsers is to not go the whole drive without checking the map. And what I mean by that is, you know, I live in Illinois. If I'm driving to Yellowstone this summer, I know it's generally west. I can hop in my car and start driving. I can. I mean, if I drove long enough and far enough, like I probably kind of figured out maybe eventually, I don't know. But there also are people who will have their GPS turned on before they've gotten in the car, you know, and they pop it in and they're watching every, even the part of the drive that they know, they're watching the GPS, right? the the middle ground there is can you drive for an hour or two and then check the map and kind of see how we're doing and then can we drive a few more hours check the map kind of see how we're doing the equivalent of that with writing is write 15 to 20 000 words and then stop and assess and see where you are right that's a point where you don't have to plot every little thing but by 15 20 000 we should know what our character wants we should have our character kind of on That journey, that path that's going to be the premise of this book, the thing that when I read the product description on Amazon, this is why I bought it, was for this little adventure. By 20 ,000, we should be in that, right? And if we're not, or we're not sure what that even is yet, then we need to kind of reassess and have a look at this, right? We do have 20 ,000 words of our character. We probably know them a lot better than we did 20 ,000 words ago. So maybe we can kind of pick it up from there and see if we can get them moving on their little journey here at this point and start making that progress, right? Have these little check -ins, right? 15, 20 ,000 and then stop. And then write 15, 20 ,000 and then stop. And just get a sense of where you are. It doesn't mean you have to, oh God, I'm coming up on 50 % and I got to do my little midpoint turn. If you're a discovery author, you have no idea if you're at 50%. Like you could be aiming for 80 ,000 words and you could hit 40 ,000 words. And actually your draft ends up being 57 instead of 80, or it ends up being 113 instead of 80. Like you have no idea. So I'm not asking you to pigeonhole plot beats into places where they don't fit what you're writing. But I do think instead of driving blindly for the whole drive, which is what some panthers do almost as a matter of like principle, like to prove that plotting is so stupid. Why would you plot? You know, I think there's a hybrid in between the two that makes a lot of sense. where you write and you check and you write and you check and you write and you check. I just think that makes a lot of sense to ensure that you're at least in the general direction of old faithful. You know, otherwise it's going to be a long drive.

BETH MCMULLEN

This is really actually, I'm glad you're seeing this. I think this is good for Lisa, honestly, because I feel like, I feel like some, if you were a, pantser and your process, as you said, works great for you and you're fine with it, then that's a whole different thing. But if you're somebody who aspires to a slightly different process that will have different results, as in you will end up with your script faster and something more to work with,

JOEL BRIGHAM

you're somebody

BETH MCMULLEN

script faster and something more to work with, then I love this hybrid idea because it kind of puts you in the middle. Because you're not committing to, I'm never going to look back. I'm just going to go. And giving yourself some boundaries. Like, I will look back, but not until I hit 10 ,000 words. Then I will look back and I will assess where I am. So I feel like that's actually, we're going to field test this on Lisa and come back with, we're going to come back with some analytics.

JOEL BRIGHAM

You know, the other benefit to this too is, you know. Like I said, when you're pantsing a draft and you're done, it ends up being so much work. And if you are checking in and kind of getting back on the tracks once in a while, you are creating less work for yourself in the revision process without compromising your ability to discover. It's not like you're saying they have to be at this location by this page, but you realize, you know what I haven't done for a while is have these two characters. experience something together and kind of argue so tomorrow i don't know what i'll do but they're gonna have to do something where they argue you know it puts you back on track to know kind of like okay you know i can still discover but have a have a sense of things right and or even ask like that midpoint turn the whole point of that is if i've been giving my character a bunch of small victories you know the midpoint turn is where we create a major setback you can assess that have i been writing a bunch of small victories or a bunch of small defeats because If it's much a little small defeat, then that midpoint turn is where I really figure something out. And now after all these little losses, I'm finally on the right track. And then you know that the momentum has turned here at this point. Even tracking that kind of thing can save you from just having complete chaos on the page. I think a discovery draft and a chaotic draft are two totally different things. There are writers who just want to go. And then just see what it comes out. I have writers who give it to me and say, make something out of this, you know, and I will. But it feels like then the author doesn't have a sense of what they want their art to be. It just feels kind of purpose, not purposeless, directionless in their purpose. So those check -ins, I think, are good for a lot of reasons, not just to stay motivated writing, but to save yourself time and revision and to make sure that there's some kind of pacing to your story beyond just like, very flat feeling. What's this next, this next, this next, this next, you know? Pantsing can be a lot of and then, and then, and then, and then. Instead of give them a choice, and now there's consequences to that choice that they have to deal with, which leads to more choices, which leads to more consequences, which means, you know, pants drafts can be a lot of just, and then this happened, and then this happened, and then this happened. And there's no through line with a plot to that, which is why it ends up being so much work to revise. So check -ins can kind of save you, I think, from that. You know, what's my purpose? What am I working toward? And how can I get there?

BETH MCMULLEN

Well, and each time that you have a check -in, you know so much more about where you're going. You know so much more about the character. You know so much more about the setting that you've chosen for the story. So I actually really like that idea, not only for Lisa, but for myself, because I am a notorious discovery writer and I will write. tens of thousands of words that just get ditched because I can't figure out what it is I'm trying to get to. And then when I get there, I'm like, great. Now I know, but boy, a lot of time has gone by in the interim that I would like to have saved.

JOEL BRIGHAM

time has

JOEL BRIGHAM

I'll add something to that. Cause I just remembered a tip that worked really well for one of my authors is that, you know, with discovery drafts, as you're, you're checking in, you may decide to switch something. This isn't a girlfriend anymore. This is going to be a boyfriend, you know? And then I wrote 30 ,000 words with the girlfriend. I got to go back and rewrite the boyfriend. Don't do that. Do a comment in your document that says going to change Toby to Antoinette. And then from that moment on, write as though Antoinette has always existed and that Toby never did. And then when you revise, everything you wrote from that point on is going to be less work. And you're not killing your momentum to go back and fix everything up to the point where you're making that really critical change. in plot or character, just like pretend like that change was always the way it was. Keep going, make a note. And then, you know, okay, everything from word one to word 30 ,000, I have to scrub, you know, I have to fix that. But everything else from 30 to 80 ,000 words is good. So that, that helps too.

BETH MCMULLEN

Well, this has been wildly informative. I think I'm actually going to try to make some little cheat sheets and checklists for our listeners out of this episode, because I think there's so much good stuff in here that they're going to want to hold onto. So thank you, Joel, so much for making the time and for being here with us today and sharing your experiences. We are grateful.

JOEL BRIGHAM

It is my pleasure. I appreciate you ladies having me on.

BETH MCMULLEN

And listeners, remember, you can find out more about Joel by visiting our podcast notes and the blog at writerswithwrinkles .net. And Lisa and I are back next time with an Ask Beth and Lisa episode. So please see the podcast notes for how to send us a question or use any of our social channels to submit a question. And until then, happy reading, writing. and listening.