Refuse to Be Done - Takeaways

I recently reread the second part of Refuse to Be Done by Matt Bell to get some guidance on how to proceed with rewriting The Everstone. Matt’s book walks through the steps of writing a novel in three drafts. Even though I have a feeling this is going to take more than three drafts, Matt’s advice is well worth the read, and I wanted to share my favorite highlights from this section.

1. The first draft is “an idea of what the novel could be.”

I’ve found this true for a lot of my projects, including The Everstone. By writing the first draft, you are putting down the material that you need to form the finished product of your novel. In the second draft, you follow that map to transform your book into what you envisioned.

Not only does this make me feel better about my messy rough drafts, it has helped me change my mindset toward the second draft. Rewriting doesn’t seem so daunting when you realize that it’s just reshaping what you already have to better fit your vision for it. It’s no longer a process of deconstruction but of beautiful reconstruction.

2. Put time between you and your draft

This is a piece of advice I hear all the time; no matter what you’re revising, you need to put time between you and the piece of writing. This way, you return to the writing with a fresh mind ready to see the flaws as well as the potential in what you worked on. Matt specifically points out two different kinds of time that help separate you from your project.

The first is Lived Time—the chronological, clock-ticking, ordinary time that usually comes to mind when you think of “time.” Let enough Lived Time pass to get the draft out of your thoughts. By taking your mind off of the draft, you can return refreshed.

The second is Art Time—time spent working on another project. To get your brain off of the draft but keep up your artistic growth, set to work on something else for the endurance of your break. Eventually, when you return to your draft, you will have become a slightly different writer better equipped for the task at hand.

3. Outline what already exists and revise the outline into a plan

I think I did this first step a little too early with The Everstone. I didn’t leave myself enough of a break from the moment I finished it to the moment I started outlining what I had written. So even though I’ve had enough of a break by now, the outline I made of the draft is still from the old Miriam’s point of view. I’m still going to use the outline I have, but in the future, I’m going to wait longer before making one.

Matt suggests outlining only the events that happen in the story so that you can focus on the rate of revelation throughout the story. Jim Shepard defines the rate of revelation as, “the sense we have for the pace at which we’re learning crucial emotional information about the stories’ central figures.” By studying the rate of revelation, you discover which action drove the plot, weed out the lags, and uncover the inherent plot structure so that you can play into it when rewriting the outline.

4. Make sure the inciting incident is clearly established

This was a shorter section than the others, but as someone who struggles with plot points (and plotting in general), I appreciated this small advice on writing inciting incidents. Because Matt doesn’t stop at the inciting incident. He discusses how the scenes that follow should efficiently bring readers from the introduction to the main event of the story. The transition occurs when characters stop reacting to the inciting incident and start enacting solutions to the problem.

Those are my main takeaways, but there are so many helpful hints throughout the whole book. I highly suggest buying Matt Bell’s book or at least renting it out from the library (this is my second time doing that, so it’s definitely on my to-buy list).

Lastly, I wanted to leave you with this inspiring quote from the book. Whether you’re working on your second draft or dreading it while writing your first, I hope it’ll motivate you to refuse to be done:

“The trick of the second draft is to recapture or re-create the magic that inspired the novel in the first place, but to do so with the fullness of the style you developed by the time you reached the end.” – Matt Bell