100 Words a Day
Beginning a story for me always feels so daunting, all those blank pages with so much potential — yet how to fill them with a story?
In 2020, for the first time I actually completed a rough draft from start to finish. It wasn’t very good if I’m honest, but that’s the beauty of a rough draft — its allowed to be a mess. The important part is that I had finally completed something. I could write stories, ADHD or not.
The method I used not only allowed me to conquer that deep fear that I might never be able to complete a story. It taught me so much about how I write and where I needed a lot of skill leveling — such as plotting and dialogue — and where I excelled.
Funny enough, this method came from reading fanfiction. Often called ‘drapples’ or ‘snippets’, writers told their stories in 100 word chapters. (Which is amazing when your attention span is 2 minutes. No massive paragraphs or too detailed details to drag yourself through.) And in reading these the thought occurred to me that this was the perfect way to hone several skills all at once! (Another bonus for us ADHD folk who like an all-in-one-method.)
I began writing 100 words a day, but the catch was it had to be a scene. As in, something had to happen within 100 words — no drawn out scereny descriptions (sorry Tolkien fans) or monologues. It also means no stopping mid-paragraph.
The idea is to move the story along. The snippet can end at a small cliffhanger that allows you to pick up the next 100 words or at the end of a full scene, as you want these little clusters to form a chapter. There also needs to be some details, you want to still engage in the five senses and know what your characters are doing, but these are short and sweet — just another piece that adds to the ‘scene’.
Of course later on after you complete your first draft, you can absolutely add more details in. For now, it’s all about getting the skeleton of the story down so you have something to work with. Again, a rough draft is just that, rough! It’s existence is purely for our eyes only, so allow yourself to write something terrible. You can always fix it.
More importantly, this method allowed me to work on several skills at once. By economizing to a set amount, the words that are used must be chosen carefully, as you have a limit to how to express moments or emotions. It also helps eliminate those extra words like ‘just’ and ‘very’, as these filler words can eat away at your limit. Which in turn gives you more time in your second draft to work on characters and plot holes, rather than wording.
Another thing it teaches, is how to balance your dialogue and prose. In order to move the story forward in 100 words, things have to happen between characters and the world around them. With that limitation set in place, you’re once again forced to economize and keep only what’s important for the story.
Now, depending on how long you want your story 100 words a day could mean well over a year, but often times I found once I got started it was easy to keep going and I was able to write out over 30,000 words in 3 months. And this was the biggest factor towards overcoming that ‘executive dysfunction’ we often face with ADHD, wanting to do something but not able to get our minds to make that switch. By telling yourself ‘its only 100 words and then I’m done’ or ‘it’ll only take 5–10 minutes’ allows you to kick start the process. Once you’re sitting down, you might find yourself (like I did) completing 10–20 scenes — that’s 1,000 to 2,000 words! And on the bad days where the motivation isn’t there or the words seem to escape you, all you have to get done is 100 words.
I will definitely continue to use snippets for writing out drafts. It’s clear cut and leaves a lot of room for growth in the plot as it shifts and changes. What methods have you tried that worked best? If you choose to try this method out I would love to hear how it went for you!
Happy writing,
Maddyn
