Organising Chaos: Turn a Messy Draft into a Publishable Novel originated as a talk given by Sophie Beal (Director of Cadence Publishing) and Gary Dalkin (Senior Associate Editor with Cadence Publishing) at the 2024 Bournemouth Writing Festival. The talk sold out and Sophie and Gary were asked to give the talk again at this year’s festival, where it proved to be the most popular daytime event of the entire three days. For this online version of Organising Chaos Gary and Sophie have revised and expanded the session, with additional material they weren’t able to include in the one hour timeslot at the festival.
So what is Organising Chaos and who is it for? Simply it is designed to help any writer whose novel is stuck in a chaotic early draft and who is looking for the way forward to get that book finished. It is about the realities of self-editing without ruining your mental health.
The talk covers both the psychological (understanding how novel-writing is for the long haul, and how the first draft is just the beginning of a marathon rather than a sprint) and the practical, offering lots of actionable guidance on how to get it done. This ranges from not wasting time on small details until you’ve got the big picture right (structure, characters, plot) to how to look at your manuscript with fresh eyes (top tip: don’t even look at it for two months).
Organising Chaos will cover:
- Developing a novelist’s mindset
- Whether you care enough about your novel to do the work required - would it be better to use what you've learnt from this book but start something new (learning from experience is not defeat)
- The big picture — getting the story and characters right (including isolating the central idea and finding the 'good bits')
- How to shake things up and see them differently
- Planning your next draft
- The pros and cons of lots of fast drafts vs a few slow ones
- 'killing your darlings'
- How to reinspire your writing brain — problem solving by freewriting, talking things over with a friend, writing exercises, and much more
- Practical ideas, from using notebooks to dictating as you walk the dog to discovering new software
- When to use beta readers or hire a professional editor
There will be time to ask questions, which can be submitted in advance by email, or during the session. As well as being practical and informative, Sophie and Gary hope to bring the humour and entertainment of the ‘real world’ version of Organising Chaos to Writing Magazine’s online platform.
