Side Writing and Prompts and Journaling, Oh My!

Useful non-narrative writing techniques for your novel

I chose this because I love writing with fountain pens. Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

Note: This post is my mid-week extra which used to come out on Wednesdays but now comes out on Thursdays. Except you will note that today is Friday, not Thursday. Yes, I noticed that, too. I tried valiantly to get this out yesterday but a middle-school track meet foiled my efforts. I almost decided to wait until next week, but then I figured maybe there’s somebody out there who wants to work on their novel this weekend but is stuck. If that’s you, here you go. I hope this helps.

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When it comes to writing a novel, there’s working on the story itself (i.e., writing scenes and the narrative summary that connects them, putting words on the page for your future reader), and then there is a whole raft of other writing you can do to enhance that story. Activities such as side writing, writing to prompts, and journaling about your story. Which are our focus for today.

There are two schools of thought on the usefulness of these habits. I’ve read, to my horror, that some eschew them, saying that only writing on the story itself is worthwhile. Such blasphemy! Clearly I fall into the other camp. That’s the one that says novel writing is hard, and thus you should use anything and everything and whatever works for you to get that story on the page and out in the world. I don’t care if you hang from the ceiling and write upside down, or write first drafts in Haiku, or whistle while you write. Whatever works, use it. And in that spirit, I hope you’ll find the techniques listed here helpful.

I started out planning to write this post solely on prompts for novel writing but then I realized that prompts are but one part of a bigger picture, which to my mind includes side writing and journal writing. Before we dive in, let me say this. If you’re stuck someplace in your draft, if you’re despairing you’ll never finish your novel, and if you’ve never tried any of these techniques, read on. Side writing and its permutations might save your writing life.

Side Writing

I was once co-leading a writing workshop, back in the pre-Covid days when we all sat around a big table eating cookies, drinking wine, and discussing people’s pages, and one of the writers was having difficulty writing a scene. Someone, probably me, suggested writing about the scene rather than struggling along writing in the scene. “Oh, I’ve never thought of that before.” Much chatter about what a great idea that was ensued. Shocked silence from me.

Because I always, always, always, keep a notebook handy as I write, and I assumed everybody did that. I can’t imagine my writing life without it. The notebook is for notes, ideas, a place to turn to when I need to write something out. And by writing something out, I mean anything my brain needs to puzzle over or ponder. I think best on paper or screen. My hand needs to be engaged for my brain to activate or remember.

Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash

Recently, I’ve been doing a lot of my side writing on the computer, due to an episode of trigger finger. And so for my latest WIP (three scenes to go to finish the first draft) I have, wait for it, a thirty-six page document given over to side writing and notes. I know. This document could be a whole other book, were it in any kind of order or if it would make sense to anyone other than me. But it has gems and nuggets of gold in it and I can’t wait to print it out and pore over it when I’m done with this draft.