*This one's for Suse, who's currently throwing down rails for a new project about love, music and growing up. You definitely should check out her other two projects, 'Girls who play guitars' and 'Finding Abby'--she'll make you laugh and cry just a little and leave you with all the warm feels!*

Drafting a novel - First you need rails.

In my last post about writing, I talked about the importance of holding a picture of your complete novel in your imagination as you write and share it out. Maggie Stiefvater writes a 'feathery' sketch of an outline. I prepare to complete a novel by 'throwing down track.' These rails of research, character sketches, and plot outline keep the story chugging forward week after week without losing its way.

Let's use a real example!

I'm in the process of gathering my rails to throw down track for my upcoming project, tentatively named 'The Light Circus.' I have a growing muckpile of things I want the story to include, and I'm intentionally including a mix of familiar things that won't require much effort to write, and unique, unfamiliar things will be an interesting challenge. Check it out!

Clockwise from left: Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, cows at my dairy farm, Ti Lite Twist wheelchair, Aaron 'Wheeler' Fotheringham just hanging around.

Elements that are familiar and easy for Rae: 

Cary Douglas, age 28, Enneagram 9w8 'The Peacemaker'. I've been writing Cary forever and his voice comes easy to me.

Small prairie city setting. Hello Moose Jaw! I'm in this city regularly.

Dairy farm setting. All the cows! I've had a half time job at a dairy farm for years. Can't wait for you to meet my cows ;)

Present day setting: it's 2019, pre-COVID, in Canada. No worries about anachronistic technology or cultural references.

New elements that are a challenge for Rae:

New main character, 12 year old Will! He's so new he doesn't even have a last name yet...

WILL character sketch by Teylor.AArt!

Will is a whole ball of things that are challenging to write. He's an Enneagram 7 'The Enthusiast' with a whole different way of processing his emotions than someone like me (I'm in the Feelings Triad) or Cary (who's in the Body Triad).

Will has Cerebral Palsy, and his wheelchair is basically a part of his body. He's fast and strong, but he encounters limitations everyday because lots of places in a small city setting are only accessible to legs, not wheels.

Will is a lot younger than any of my previous main characters. He's going to have limited capacity for mature reflective judgement. This project will barely fit the criteria for a YA novel, but there you are. I have a long-standing canon of writing--in 2019, Will is 12 turning 13 for reasons. (One of them being--I'm not ready to write about the pandemic in 2020!)

Lastly, I'm dreaming of including segments from Cary's graphic novel The Light Circus' which Will is a huge fan of. So just worldbuilding a whole fantasy setting as a side gig...no biggie.

How Rae throws down track to write a novel:

1. Gather the rails--all the story elements and ideas, setting, characters.

Make a big messy pile of interesting muck you want to use. Maybe you have Pinterest boards, or an actual giant whiteboard in your bedroom. I use Windows OneNote.

I write character driven stories, so I research their personalities using the Enneagram Institute website. (I'll tell you more about that in a future post if you're interested).

Specificity is always interesting, so gather up specific details about the place your characters live, the style of clothes they wear if that's your jam, the job they go to every day. Talk to people you know about their jobs, and focus on the smells, feels and everyday moments that you can't get from a TV program or article.

Whatever intrigues you, throw it in the pile of creative muck--you can weed through later!

2. Know what you don't know and research the h*ll out of it.

I knew I wanted to write about disability in this project--this is the field my husband works in, and we need more stories about ordinary people with disabilities who are the heroes of their own story. HOWEVER I know just enough to realize I'm going to need more than my good imagination to move from my mostly able-bodied experience into the experience of someone who faces accessibility challenges every day.

SO I racked my brains to think of how I could ground this project in real-life experience. I reached out someone I know on the fringe of my friend group to see if she would be willing to serve as a consultant and first reader on this project. She has Cerebral Palsy, and also put me in touch with another young woman with CP who uses a chair full-time. When they agreed to come on board, that clinched it for me.

I'm not going to make sh*t up just to touch hearts and get reads. Living with disability is the real life, often overlooked, experience of actual people and this story is for and about them. I have a ton to learn about my body and the world I navigate by listening to these marginalized voices. Will's story isn't inspiration porn for people with legs, and his wheelchair isn't a metaphor or a plot device. His disability doesn't make him extraordinarily kind or good--he's just a kid who happens to use wheels.

So there you go--Will has CP because I have committed reader-friends who are willing to share the nitty gritty of their ordinary life with CP with me.

I'm also doing my own homework by reading first-hand accounts of people with disability in wheelchairs, and consuming YouTube videos created by people with disability. I took a seminar about how to include people with disability in your writing offered by a Canadian Writers Guild.

It's like Julie Cameron ('The Right to Right') says--when you put your creative intention into the Universe, the Universe answers. Or maybe that's just my network of friends on social media lol. I've been stumbling over just what I need for this story the past year and gathering it all up.

This project has taken me much longer to get ready for than For Us and For Keeps, but I think the pay-off for any reader seeing themselves in my story will be worth it, if I can pull it off!

3. Draft a quick and dirty plot outline.

This is when it starts to get fun--when I move from piles of research to throwing down dialogue and drama. I'll talk more about this in my next post!

*I wrote this just before putting The Light Circus on the backburner to undertake a massive edit of For Us for Watttys. (Umm might as well re-read it, so many new warm, sexy scenes I'm telling you!)

As I was finishing that edit, I  realized if I want to write as much as I want, I need my work hours to be more profitable--which means going back to school to upgrade. So, suprise! I'm cramming in hundreds of muscle names, origins, insertions, and actions to become a Registered Massage Therapist in 18 months.

The cool thing is--in the long term, I'll actually be able to help people who carry trauma in their bodies, like Cary, in a hands-on way. Plus make 3x what I currently make, freeing up time to write without worrying about making a paycheck with my writing.

But in the short term lovelies, I'm very sorry to say it'll probably be months before you see the first chapters of The Light Circus.

I will keep updating Rae's Reads to help all my writer friends on here! And I have a little Christmas one-shot in my mind...so keep this book and For Keeps in your library to catch those updates ♡ *