I wrote a book in 45 days.

The Making of Polar Protocol

Polar Protocol started its life as a 30-day novel writing challenge under the name ELF. The initial idea was 'Christmas spy thriller.' I had never completed NaNoWriMo (the write-a-book-in-30-days) challenge before, and wanted to try it.

My aim was for 30,000 words in 30 days. 

I put together a 30 chapter plot, planning for each to be 1,000 words, and got to work. It was going to be a fast-paced, political thriller with some decent twists and turns. It was early November. My mind was already on Christmas so it turned into a Christmas spy thriller starring a pesky elf. 

And I wanted it family-friendly. No cursing, no naughty scenes. Just good, clean family fun.

Artemis Fowl meets Red One meets Discworld was sort of my idea.

It kind of worked out.

It took 45 days and it went around 50,000 words on the first draft, but I did get it done!

I went a little over.. in both word count and timeline, but it was still the fastest I've ever completed a book!

That has to count for something.

Using AI in the Process

This is controversial in the writing and creative space, but I wanted to give it a try. I didn't use it to write any of the book, but I used it a few different ways during the process.The first was to look over my plot. I wrote out my 30-point plot, broken into chapters and asked Gemini to look it over. I asked it to identify any plot holes or questions it had about the story. To be honest, it was okay at it. It gave me a few decent questions and ideas, but nothing particularly great. There was one glaring hole that it identified, but other than that... didn't do much here.

The second time I used it was much more useful. Roughly 75% of the way through my first draft, I fed the entire manuscript, up to that point, into Gemini. I told it I was writing a modern spy thriller, had 25% left and wanted its feedback on what it thought needed to be tied up in the last quarter. I didn't ask it to write anything, or for plotting. Only for loose ends and questions that needed to be answered. 

This was much more useful.

It took some back and forth with prompts to get great answers but it gave me fairly detailed answers on lingering questions, plot holes that needed answers and character arcs that should be completed, or better defined. It also gave me some great notes on characters that changed names by accident during my writing, (Something I am very bad at), and locations that had swapped names. 

I rebalanced the end of my plot and finished my story. I ended up with a new ending based on some of how the book had progressed and some of the questions that Gemini had raised. 

First draft done! 50,016 words and 42 days. Not bad at all. 

This was much more motivation than AI in terms of speed. 

Anyways, I had my first draft and it was fairly solid. Once again, I fed the entirety of it into Gemini and asked it to evaluate the manuscript as a modern spy thriller highlighting anything it saw as needing improvement. I left it a little more open-ended as I was curious what it would spit back. 

Most of its suggestions were actually around characters and character arcs. It had some... bold and interesting... ideas on how I should rewrite some of the characters. 

It did have some notes and questions around the plot which were helpful. 

The most useful bits it gave me were actually around the pacing of the story. I wish I had saved the exact wording but it sounded like a sassy girl. It was something like 'the middle slowed to an absolute drag.' 

Overall, it wasn't the most useful beta read, but it did give me some ideas and thoughts during my second pass. 

In the interest of speed and curiosity, I used Gemini heavily during my second edit. I fed each chapter into it, chapter by chapter, asking it to lightly edit the chapter in the style of a modern spy thriller. It took a few attempts and me saying 'do less' before I was comfortable with how it was editing the chapters. 

Even saying lightly edit, it was basically rewriting the entire thing. I had to narrow it down to essentially doing a line-edit. Eventually, it was doing a nice job cleaning up grammar and adding modest touches. Mostly, it was cutting out unnecessary words. 

I ended up being able to edit the entire manuscript in 3 days. It did take a decent amount of time and frustration, but I got a clean second draft that cut out about 8,000 words of fluff. 

For my third pass, I did a completely human pass. After fighting with Gemini to keep my words on the page during the editing, it had done a great job in its editing duties. The story was fast-paced, kept most of the humour and interest without sacrificing depth in the cutting room floor. 

I ran it through ProWritingAid as a last check and uploaded it into Atticus. 

And..... here we are! 

A finalized, edited book in 45 days. 

Final Thoughts

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First on the book... It's fun. It's a silly, short spy thriller set in the world of the North Pole. You can read it with your kids. It has some silly laughs and a Hallmark level of heart. 

I won't pretend its award-worthy or my best work, but I am proud of it.

It's just fun.

On using AI... I see how it can be helpful. I think it's a nice tool to bounce ideas off of. It's quick and efficient at getting answers and thoughts. Some of what spit back at me was useful, but a lot of it was strange. I never want to use it for writing, but I think I will use it from time to time for research, brainstorming, or some basic editing.