Perhaps you’ve tried your hand at this writing lark before. Perhaps you’ve even written a first draft, or part of one. But it met with polite silence and sideways glances from friends who didn’t want to offend when you gave it to them for feedback.
It’s been said that everyone has a novel in them, and certainly many have tried to write one (finishing it being another story!). But if you’ve gone to the trouble of looking for information on how to write a novel, then presumably you’re pretty serious about it. And you don’t want to just write any old novel – you want to write a good novel. You want to write a novel that a publisher will accept. You have Ambition.
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You want to write a novel, but where do you start? Perhaps you’re lucky enough to have an idea for your novel that is as clear and defined as an ice sculpture. Or perhaps you’re teeming with imprecise ideas that are like chimeraic heads popping up briefly out of some primordial soup, only to nose dive when you zoom in, telephoto-like, to take a look. Or they crumble like aged stone statues when you try to dress them in flesh.
Before You Start To Write A Novel
Don’t make things hard for yourself. Tell the inner critic he’ll have time for his say later, when you’ve got a first draft. Don’t try to dot all your i’s and cross all your t’s first up. It really doesn’t matter. You can do that later.
Leave your expectations at the door. You may well have a Pulitzer Prize winning novel in you. It may even be your first novel. Or it may not. But the point is, if you don’t let your novel develop in an organic way, without the interference of a well-meaning, high achieving parent (your expectations), then you’ll never get the bloody thing done…
How To Write A Novel – Getting Out The Gate
There are advantages to working out your plot and characters in detail before you begin the first draft. For one, you find out in advance whether your story idea will stand up to the length and depth of a novel. You figure out if your lead characters belong as the lead characters – whether they are interesting enough, whether in fact the story does involve them in a significant way. If you just start out writing, you may just find a character you thought to be the lead is really just an incidental character. Working out such details in the first place can save you a lot of rewriting further down the road.
Also, for the days when inspiration just seems to elude you, having a solid, detailed plan – with characters who breath, imbued with details and quirks so that they feel three dimensional – on those days, it’s much easier to actually do some writing if you don’t have to wrestle with the uncertainty of a half realized or terminal plot. There’s no better way to beat procrastination that when you have a roadmap and know exactly where you’re going. Then it just becomes a matter of discipline to take that road.
Of course, many people have written ‘by the seat of their pants’ quite successfully. But, even when that has worked in the past, it’s no guarantee against writer’s block in the future. Mapping out the plot and characters in detail before you begin to write a novel can not only increase your productivity as a writer, but also the quality of your novels. If you’re not trying to work out where you’re going in the first draft, you can produce a much tighter, more fluent work.
Good novels have rich, compelling characters, and a strong plot. At least, that’s what makes a good, commercial novel. It often makes a good literary novel too, but the latter do like to bend the rules a little bit.
So, how do you create compelling characters? And what the heck do you do about plot? We cover these in the following articles:
- Steps to writing a novel – Plot
- How to write your first novel – Characters
- Steps To Writing A Novel
- How to write a successful novel – Tips On Ideas
- Novel writing advice – Point Of View
- Writing Plot – The Creative Process
- Writing a romance novel
- How to plot a novel
- Write a novel in 30 days
- Writing a novel tips
- Novel writer software – Is it for you?
- Novel writing software How NewNovelist Works
- Novel writing help – Sub-Plots & Reviving A Stalled Novel
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