Three years ago I tried writing a novel in 30 days and ended up with 50,000 words of pure nonsense

It was November 2021 and I thought hey, NaNoWriMo sounds fun. I had this grand idea about a detective who solves crimes in a futuristic city where everyone lives underwater. By day 15 I had written like 20 chapters of the guy just walking through underwater hallways and describing the lighting. I never even introduced a crime. The whole thing was just worldbuilding with no plot. I got the word count but it's the worst thing I've ever read. Has anyone else finished a big writing challenge and ended up with something totally unusable?

3 comments

3 Comments

thea6026d ago

I hear you saying "the whole thing was just worldbuilding with no plot" like that's a bad thing but honestly that sounds like a solid first draft to me. You wrote 50,000 words in a month that's impressive even if they weren't perfect. A lot of famous authors treat their first drafts as pure garbage they never show anyone so yours is just part of the process. You learned what doesn't work like having a detective with no crime to solve which is actually useful. Next time you'll know to start with a simple plot skeleton before adding the underwater hallways.

josephbailey6d ago

Wait, hold up - did you say underwater hallways? That's actually wild lmao.

miles_robinson206d ago

Take that mess and use it as a reference for your next project... you already know what not to do now, which is half the battle. I did the same thing with a fantasy novel once, ended up with 40k words of just describing a forest.