4 Productivity Hacks to Finish Your First Novel in 2024
2024 is the year you learn to write a book. Grab your exciting story idea and let’s go.
There’s no way around it. Writing a book—especially your first—is tough.
Of all the bright-eyed writers who set out to write a book each year, only about 3%—10% actually reach the end of their first draft. Who knows how many of those writers then carry out the necessary edit rounds to either self-publish or present the completed manuscript to an agent.
Why do so many writers call it quits? One study by ThriftBooks says the majority of failed manuscripts result from:
An inability to come up with an ending
Growing bored of characters or story
Non-writing commitments getting in the way
So, yes. It’s hard. But not impossible. With the right tools and tricks of the trade, you can set yourself up for success by knocking these three common quitting obstacles out of your way. Not only could a completed story be a major milestone in your life, but it could be a first step towards publishing and sharing your book with the world.
And just think how incredible it would feel to finish that entire book, holding a printed-out physical first draft in your hands, saying, “I made this”. And all before 2025.
If you're serious about finishing your first book this year, explore these four tips to help you cross the finish line.
#1. Craft realistic goals
Ever had a teacher or a boss urge you to “reach for the stars” only to feel crushed by overwhelm? Unrealistic goals do not necessarily yield incredible results. In fact, they tend to do just the opposite.
Depending on your available resources, an unattainable and unspecific goal might sound like, “I’ll finish writing my book in two months.”
A better goal might be, “In ten months, I’ll finish my 60,000 first draft of my Young Adult story by writing two chapters a week with accountability from my book coach in order to prove to myself that I can do this”.
So much better, right?
Realistic goals, research says, make us happier because they’re easier to reach and we feel a greater sense of control in the process. Attainable goals connect to a deeper “why”, are specific, trackable, and broken down into smaller actionable steps.
Define Your Why
What’s your “why”? Your unique motivation for writing this specific story? Maybe you want to finish a book just to prove to yourself you can do it, jumpstart your writing skills with hands-on practice, inspire your children to go after their dreams by leading by example. Or perhaps the story idea just sounds really cool and you want to bring it to life. It can be anything, or even a combination of a few things. The more personal your “why”, the better. Put a half hour on your timer and free write on all your possible “whys” for writing a book in 2024. Once you find one or two that make your heart sing, you’ve struck core motivation.
Get Specific
Completing a book is pretty specific already, but we can make it even tighter by making it trackable. In terms of defining your clear goal, here’s a big tip for first-time novelists: find a wordcount you can actually do, aiming for about 60% of your target wordcount. That means if you’re planning to write a 80,000 word story, write a 50,000 word first draft. This length prevents you from overwriting, leaving plenty of room for high-level edits and giving you space to play around with your characters on the page enough to really get a feel for them. This wordcount goal also alleviates the pressure to churn out a perfect, full-length novel on your first go.
Choose a Timeline
How long will it take you? Hard to say if you’ve never done this before. Start with how much time it takes you to write 1,000 words and do the math from there for a rough estimate. Remember you’ll need additional time for light research on any unknown content for your story, creating an outline, building characters, and any other plot work before you get to the actual writing. Consider what your daily schedule will look like in the coming year. Then, on top of that, add additional “buffer time” because according to productivity writer Kristi DePaul, goals become easier to reach if we increase our estimated deadline by 25%.
Break Your Goal into Smaller Goals
The last step to making your goal attainable is to break it down into digestible mini-goals. It’s a lot easier to wrap your head around writing 1,000 words a week than tackling an entire book.
When building your smaller goals, first take inventory of your time, tools, and personal needs. Consider the following:
Do you have a suitable workspace? If not, lay out the steps you need to secure a quiet space for consistent writing sessions, which might include setting boundaries around writing time with your family and housemates, investing in a comfortable chair and desk, or renting a spot at your local coworking space. If you can, opt for a designated writing space separate from your kitchen table so your mind has an easier time transitioning to writing sessions. Virgina Woolf was right. A room of one’s own really does make a huge impact on your fiction writing practice.
Do you have the right tools? In addition to the right workspace, equip yourself with any writing software. This might take some exploring. Chat GPT can help you with organizing your thoughts and light research. Your local library’s free programs and software can help you with in-depth research. Physical tools like noise-cancelling headphones and an ergonomic mouse can help you stay focused and cramp-free. A writing coach can help you with accountability and writing skills. And don’t forget stashing some of your non-writing tools away, by turning off notifications on social media platforms, closing unnecessary tabs, and creating a distraction-free writing environment.
How will you rest and take care of your body? Writing is a largely sedentary activity and can be emotionally taxing when doubts crop up or you just need a break. Plan to take care of yourself with consistent personal care. After all, you’re a human being—not a robot! Schedule regular breaks during your writing sessions, as these can refresh your mind and prevent burnout. Get enough sleep, exercise and stretch regularly, connect with real life community, and dive into immersive activities that relax and reset you, preferably away from screens.
How will you deal with missed deadlines and scheduling surprises? Having an action plan ahead of time will help you when things inevitably stall or sidetrack, because hiccups are just a part of life. Instead of hoping your plan works out without a hitch, practice self-compassion when obstacles emerge and schedule in a few biweekly check-ins to evaluate your plan, making adjustments as needed. The key is to do a check-in after you’ve really given your initial plan a shot, instead of changing your plan every day or so. If you’ve scheduled in that 25% “buffer time” to your deadline, that should help you set realistic expectations from the get-go, too.
Do rewards motivate you? Establish a system of rewards for achieving writing milestones, whether they’re related to your writing practice or a personal indulgence like a treat, trip, or small celebration. For example, for every three chapters you write, you can go out to a dinner with a good friend.
Once you’ve taken inventory, assemble a list of smaller goals. These could look like writing a certain wordcount each week, hiring a book coach to support you with regular check-ins, and asking your roommates not to bug you before noon on weekends. What’s so wonderful about these strategies is you can test them out and try something new if they don’t work.
Craft Your Personalized Goal
Now you can create your personalized goal with this model.
By [Date], I will accomplish [Specific Trackable Goal] by doing [Smaller Goal 1 and Smaller Goal 2, etc.] in order to achieve [Your Why / Motivation].
Once you’ve created your customized gameplan, do your best to stick to it while allowing room for semi-frequent check-ins. Once you’ve crafted an attainable, trackable goal with a strong “why” and several steps, you’re ready to plan out your story.
#2. Outline your story
Which type of writer are you: a pantser or a plotter?
If you’re a plotter, you’ll love kicking things off with a solid outline. If you’re a pantser, you might not love this advice, but you’re going to need at least a bare outline before starting if you want a better chance of finishing your book.
Because so many writers fall off the story writing wagon due to an unknown ending, you should get all other major plot points, including the resolution, written down ahead of time. It’s a lot easier to write a story if you know where it’s headed.
Using the three-act structure, here are the six major plot points to outline:
Setup: What does the status-quo world look like for your protagonist before the inciting incident?
Inciting incident: What life-changing event interrupts your protagonist’s life?
All Is Lost: What is the darkest moment for the protagonist, when it feels like things could never get better?
Crisis: What major struggle or decision has your protagonist been struggling with that they now have to face?
Climax: What is the highest point of conflict in which the protagonist makes a crucial decision?
Resolution: How does the main plot resolve? Does the protagonist get what they originally wanted?
You can get as detailed with your outline as you like. If you prefer more detail after the major plot points, you can outline everything down to the scene action in each chapter. But try not to get stuck in the details too much. At this point, you don’t need to know where every scene is headed or exactly how the crisis will connect to the climax. Just nail down enough information to feel confident writing.
If you get stuck working out a particular plot point, sleep on it or hop in the shower. Our subconscious is wonderful at problem solving once we step away and unfocus, as counterproductive as it might sound.
Or look into a more granular, time-tested outline for your story. For example, the Hero’s Journey popularized by Joseph Campbell is a great start for writers of commercial genre fantasies or quests, while Save the Cat! by Blake Snyder is a fully fleshed out beat sheet to guide you through each scene in your story.
When you’ve got an outline that works for you and your story, you’re ready to write.
#3. Write a bad first draft
Writing badly is a strange kind of freedom, especially for all you perfectionists. And since the first draft is more about finishing than reaching perfection, it’s the best time to write badly.
Most writers, even experienced ones who’ve published a handful of novels already, don’t deliver a good novel on the first try. What’s important in this beginning stage is getting your story on the page in full. You can have typos, grammatic errors, cheesy dialogue, uneven pacing, and even factual inconsistencies—as long as it’s legible from start to finish. That way, you can flesh out your story with Draft #1 to make sure everything works on a basic level before later editing into shape. And since so much of the editing process is rewriting, most if not all your initial writing will be replaced in the subsequent drafts.
As long as your story makes sense without any placeholders or annotations, that’s a solid first draft.
Freewriting
One exercise to overcoming perfectionism is to practice freewriting. Set a timer for 20 minutes and write without a worry to either structure or style. As long as you’re hitting the main plot points in your story’s outline and remaining under your target wordcount for each scene, you’ll unlock creativity and explore your story by following the threads of interest. Who knows what exciting action, new subplots, or character insight you’ll be pulled into next.
Pop-corn-ing
You don’t have to start with the first chapter and work chronologically to the final chapter, if that order feels too dry. An exciting way to write scenes is to draft them as they come to you or by starting with the fun scenes.
Perhaps you can already feel and see the climax scene, for example. Start with that one and pop-corn style the rest of your chapters by jumping from one to the other when you get the right feeling or visual for them.
Blocking
Another trick is to fill in scenes with basic “blocking”. On stage, directors will do a whole day of this, when they tell actors where to stand and how they’ll move through the scene. It’s a loose way of setting the scene action so you’re hitting all the important items while leaving out the peripheral details.
In terms of writing, you can get into as much dialogue and action as you’d like, but at the very least you want to know the most important character of the scene, generally where everything and everyone is in relation to one another, and how the important events roughly develop.
Blocking can look like, "Prince Mohammad fought the masked assassin. After taking several punches, the assassin managed to escape the prince’s hold and flee through the window.” instead of writing an entire detailed fight scene describing every punch, jab, kick, and snarky insult.
You can write as broadly as you please, as long as the story still makes sense when read in full. Avoid writing any placeholders like “X” or “TK” or leaving any unexplained action in brackets “[like this]” by the end of your first draft.
Drafting, not Editing
Do not edit your draft before it’s finished. Yes, it’s tough advice to follow, but it’s crucial if you want to reach the end. If you need to flesh out a passage of blocking or any placeholders, do so, but avoid completely rewriting a scene that still works with your initial outline. Remind yourself that the goal is to finish the story you set out to write, not to write a brand-new story.
What you can do is start a separate document for editing notes like, “This scene feels too flat” or “Something’s missing in her motivation at the beginning”. That way, you can finish your story and review all your notes afterward once you’ve had some space and distance.
#4. Rely on dedication when motivation wanes
Last but not least, learn to write even when your motivation slips.
Even the most inspired writers experience fluctuating drive. If you’re taking regular breaks from writing sessions and practicing consistent self-care, yet you still feel unmotivated? Try pushing through the slump by writing anyway.
The Yerkes-Dodson law suggests we enjoy activities like writing a book because we get just the right balance of both challenging work and reward. If the challenge is too easy or too hard, we’ll fall off the wagon. If the rewards, whether intrinsic or extrinsic, aren’t important enough to us or come too infrequently, we’ll fall off the wagon. That’s why our goals need to be attainable and customized.
But sometimes, the motivation just isn’t there, no matter how good your goal or reward system is. Non-writing things crop up. Self-doubt elbows in. Your story starts to feel stale. When these things happen (and they will), lean on dedication instead.
How do you lean on dedication? Try one of these ideas:
Cancel or post-pone your unscheduled non-writing conflicts. Sit down to write the next scene and don’t get up until it’s written, however vague or sloppy.
Make a routine out of your writing sessions, so your mind gets into the groove every time you reach your consistent, structured environment.
Get accountability through your writing community, a writing buddy, or a book coach who can give you regular deadlines.
Jot your doubts onto a piece of paper. Feel them, acknowledge them, then stow the paper in your drawer and write anyway. If the thoughts persist, consider sharing them with a trusted friend or reaching out to a therapist for support.
Once you take action, you’ll most often find that your feelings and motivation follow suit. By starting with small actions, you can trigger a positive feedback loop where the act of doing something contributes to an increase in motivation and a more positive mindset.
This also solves the issue of growing bored of your characters or your story. Once you learn to push past your waxing and waning interest, you’ll have learned a powerful skill to finish your book despite your occasional boredom.
Closing Thoughts
With an attainable and actionable gameplan, a tight outline, permission to write a bad first draft, and dedication backbone to fall back on when the going gets rough, 2024 can be the year you finally write your first book.
Once you’ve completed your story, drop everything in your life and throw a huge celebration. Pull out all the stops because you’ll have now joined the ranks of those 3%—10% of novelists. Once you’ve thoroughly celebrated your achievement, take a break from your story. After a few weeks of space, you can further explore the revision process by diving into the second draft, consulting beta readers or investing in a manuscript evaluation with actionable next steps from a professional editor.
And if you try every productivity tip in the book, but still don’t finish? Be kind to yourself and recognize that completing a story is just one measure of success. It’s just as impressive if you build a full or partial outline, assemble a cast of dreamy characters, and experiment with which writing style best suits you. You by no means need to finish an entire story to benefit from the experience.
Happy writing!