How I Write Clean One-Draft Fiction…

Writers Can Not Seem to Understand This…

So first, let me say I averaged 1.3 million words of fiction a year from 1992 until 2023. You do the math.

I wrote 106 novels in traditional publishing under a ton of pen names, and even more in indie. I have published north of 800 books and written over 700 short stories. Well over 35 million copies of my books are in print.

All were written by the exact method I am about to tell you about…

Tonight for a short story I came up with a title by combining two half-titles. “The Real Shape of Death.”

So I started typing and had just over 400 words done in 25 minutes. Fairly fast for me with an opening.

I stopped, climbed out of the timeline of the story and went back to the opening and started through it again, staying in creative voice. I added some depth, made sure names were clear, hit the return key a few more times to keep the flow moving, and by the time I got to my 400 word spot where I had left, I had just over 600 words.

I kept going, got to about a thousand words in just over an hour, took a break, and when I came back I started at the first line again, going through, fixing things and adding depth and sentences and such and when I got back to where I had left off, I had just over 1,200 words.

Wrote five hundred more words, stopped, went up out of the timeline of the story and went back about six hundred words and went through it all again, adding another 100 words.

I kept up that cycling process until I reached the end two hours later with one break, went back over the last four hundred words to make sure it was clean, and then printed up the story.

I averaged just over 1,000 words per hour with breaks, my normal speed.

One time through, clean draft when done. I will never look at the story again, got another one to write tomorrow night.

So you want to know how to write clean, one draft stories? That is how.