Writing tips

[Ryduce]

I'm hoping someone could give me some tips on how to go about writing a novel.I've only written poetry in my life,so this is a big step for me.I know there is no secret formulas or anything,but any type of help would be great.

[RobinHood3000]

Hmm, a novel? Interesting--I've never written anything of that scale (though I have a mediocre screenplay in early drafting stages), but from writing a novelette (yes, there is indeed such a classification), I'd have to say that it might really help guide writing if you have an inkling of where you want your plot to go. I don't foresee a need for you to flesh out all the details (that's half the fun of the actual writing process), but I spent hours agonizing over which direction I wanted to send my protagonist stumbling blindly in. Once I had the faintest shadow over what I wanted to do with my plot, it was comparatively smooth sailing. It may not work the same way for you, but that's just my experience. Best of luck on the novel--let us know if and when it hits the shelves!

[Charles Darnay]

Two years ago November I started writing a novel - I'm happy to say that I haven't given up!

It's a tiering process that is for sure. There are some pieces of advice that I have picked up.

1. As Robin Hood stated - you should have a general idea of what is to happen. Don't plan everything out, but have a basic outline.

That being said, don't get caught up in what is going to happen that you lose interest in what IS happening. What i mean is that don't let yourslef be too anxious to get your character to a certain point that how he gets there doesn't make sense. EVERYTHING MUST HAVE A MOTIVE

2.Whever you introduce a character, create on a separate chart, a detailed character sketch. Appearance, personality, likes/dislkies... that sort of thing. You would not believe how many times I wanted to describe one of my character's hair and suddenly realize that I didn't know what her hair colour was.

3. If your story happens over periods of time make sure that everything is logical. If two years pass, your characters must grow tear years older - a simple concept but extremely important.

4. Don't be afraid to be critical of your own work. If you write something and then look what back at what you've written and decide that it is really bad... it probably is, don't be afraid to deleate it... better to do it right away than later on.

5. Create a balance between plot and everything else.... in a short story, it is ok to be plot heavy, but with a novel, use to the space you have to develop the characters, really get to know them. If your characters have personalities, the reader will love them and what they do will be so much more meaningful.

That's about all I can spin right now.

Best of luck to you!

[TodHackett]

Ry--

Another aspiring novelist! Huzzah!

I should start by saying that I've not yet published a novel, so take my advice for what it is. But I have been working on a novel for about four years, and have roughly 250 pages of drafts to show for it. And, all modesty aside, I think they're quite good.

We write from our influences. Two of the biggest influences on me have been Kurt Vonnegut and Nathanael West. I see you've read _Cat's Cradle_. That book is largely about symbols. Actually, it's largely about a single symbol-- ice-nine. So, what is ice-nine? Well, it's water that freezes at a high temperature, for one. But obviously, it's way more than that. Ice-nine represents WMDs, environmental degredation, industrial or socio-political processes run amok, the psychic distance between the laboratory and the real world, etc. Ice-nine, in short, represents a whole host of mid-20th century problems. And the more you look at it, the more you see. It wasn't until one of my students pointed it out to me that I realized that "ice-nine" sounded a whole lot like "Einstein". Heck, if you suspend the knowledge that _CC_ was written in the early 1960's, ice-nine could even be about computer viruses.

The more you look, the more you see.

This is how I write. Some people start with plot, some with characters, some with setting. I start with symbols and explore them. As for the other stuff, I often straight-up steal my plot, characters and setting from somewhere else (this is another skill-- read authors you like, figure out why you like them, and steal their best stuff).

This is how I write. Which is not to say that this is how you should write. Maybe you're better at writing characters, in which case you should make your novel a character sketch (Hesse's _Demian_ or Palahniuk's earlier novels come to mind). Maybe you're better at writing setting, in which case you should start with that (a friend has told me that when you read Kesey's _Sometimes a Great Notion_, you can smell the forest). Experiment a bit and figure out what you're good at.

John Irving, who studied with Vonnegut some yours back, was on the Daily Show about two months ago and he said something profound. He said that Vonnegut told him early on that he should stick to writing characters, b/c he was good at it (and not so good at other things). So that's what he did. Heck, we's made a career out of it, and a damn good one at that.

Hope this helps, if you want me to read your stuff let me know, and happy writing!

[Xamonas Chegwe]

Can I just say that the leap from poetry to novel is a huge one. Have you thought of trying a few short stories first. Get a feel for developing character and plot without having to worry too much about sub-plots, minor characters and background research. That's what I'm working on at the moment; easing my way into a novel; testing the water, if you like.

Like everyone else's suggestions; that's all it is, a suggestion. If you feel ready to jump in at the deep end and write a novel, go for it.

[Doctor Boogaloo]

I need a voice, a character who needs to spill his/her guts to me. I'm really only taking dictation then and the characters drive the action. This narrative voice is pretty good at providing a setting, too -- after all, it is his story. If you have a voice but no conflict, listen harder. There has to be a problem... and by the end of things, the character(s) need to be changed by their experiences.
Writing fiction is really a cross between time travel and detective work. Think back in your own life -- it's a goldmine.
Write using all of your senses. Let the reader smell the place.
Read your work aloud. You can catch a lot of bogus stuff that way.
Begin by writing short stories. Each story should trigger another. Pretty soon you'll have a character telling you something on a grand scale -- and that will become a novel.
Hope this helps.

[TodHackett]

[QUOTE=Doctor Boogaloo]
Writing fiction is really a cross between time travel and detective work. Think back in your own life -- it's a goldmine.
Write using all of your senses. Let the reader smell the place.

See? Just like I said-- find an author you like and steal his/her best stuff <wink>.

Because when you think about it, all writing is theft. Heck, all language is theft-- it wouldn't be language if it weren't! We hear words, or read them, and hey, presto-- they're ours!

Working in a library (as I do), I often think about the authors of the books and where they learned their craft. The answer? From other books. In other words, writers steal. Shamelessly. There is one piece of writing I have ever read that was not stolen from somewhere, and that was Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky". And one could easily make the argument that that piece is theft also, just of a different sort.

I forget who it was, but some famous author (Stephen King or Kurt Vonnegut, I think) wrote somewhere that there are two kinds of writers. The first kind (I am of this sort) draws their material from other authors. The second (I suspect DB is of this variety) writes from experience. In a speech he gave at the U of Pittsburgh two years back, Chuck Palahniuk said that libraries were an author's worst enemy, and that pissed me off so much I almost stormed out. But now I understand that he said that b/c he's is a writer of the second variety, and a good one (at least, he used to be a good one...). And if, like DB, you "...need a voice, a character who needs to spill his/her guts to me...", you should read _Fight Club_ and take notes.

If you want a premier example of a writer of the first variety, though, read Pound's _Cantos_. And if you don't get Pound (because I didn't get Pound, and mostly still don't), check out Philip Furia's _Pound's Cantos Declassified_. Another writer of the first variety is Jorge Borges. Take a look at Anthony Kerrigan's translation of _Ficciones_ (unless you read Spanish, in which case you could read Borges in the original and I would be really jealous!). Borges was blind his whole life, and worked (surprise!) as a librarian and translator. Put another way, Borges lived and worked with, in and through texts. Borges read a lot, and you can think of much of his writing as a library itself; an endless catalog of authors, works, phrases and influences. Writers who can clip together all the best stuff, and do it well, get me really juiced up. That is the kind of writer I aspire to be.

DB said it-- "...Each story should trigger another...". The question is whether the causative stories are yours or someone else's. How you answer that question may well tell you what sort of writer you are. If you're of the first variety, go to the library and start reading. If you're of the second, start paying attention-- real attention-- to your experiences, your history, your senses. Dig out old photos and love letters; try to remember where, what and who you were back then. Spend a day without speaking and just listen to the things and people around you. Look at the world you inhabit and try to see something new all the time.

Perhaps most importantly, take a good, hard look at your craft and ask: what new, valuable aspects of the world can I show my readers? If you can find new meanings in your experiences, and show your readers these meanings, you'll be golden. And readers will love you for it.

[Evergreenleaf]

Different methods work for different people. I've been writing my current (first) novel for four years and a bit, and I just finished my rough draft a month ago. 580 notebook pages. It's rather incoherent, but there are some good sections in there, and I think that I can safely say that I have found the method that works for me. Here it is:

Get an idea. Start writing about it. Not writing it, just writing about it, kind of like a brainstorm. After a while the characters, plot, setting, and everything else starts to emerge. Once I have a pretty clear idea of where I'm going I start outlining, very basic at first then more and more specific. As I go along I revise my outline like crazy when I think of better ideas. When the outline is done I write the first draft. When that's done (takes a really long time, mind you) I go back and see if I have any new and better ideas, and I rewrite the outline. Then I write the second draft. That's as far as I've gotten, so I don't know beyond that, but it's working.

As Xamonas said, you might want to do some short stories before you go straight into novels. I would also suggest novellas, which are miniature novels of around fifty to one hundred pages. I think RobinHood3000 called them novelettes. Those are good, I wrote one of those in a week; they're much easier than a full novel. Of course, my novel is really long at the moment.

Good luck with your novel-writing!

[RobinHood3000]

Believe it or not, a novelette is between short story and novella, actually. Mine's around 24 pages, I think.

[SleepyWitch]

Get an idea. Start writing about it. Not writing it, just writing about it, kind of like a brainstorm. After a while the characters, plot, setting, and everything else starts to emerge. Once I have a pretty clear idea of where I'm going I start outlining, very basic at first then more and more specific. As I go along I revise my outline like crazy when I think of better ideas. When the outline is done I write the first draft. When that's done (takes a really long time, mind you) I go back and see if I have any new and better ideas, and I rewrite the outline. Then I write the second draft. That's as far as I've gotten, so I don't know beyond that, but it's working.



"Start writing about it". i think that's a very good idea. it worked for me too... (I'm writing my first novel and I'm pretty sure it's not great literature, so take my advice with a pinch of salt)... when i was unsure about how the plot should develop or what i should include and what was superfluous material, I wrote a long mail to my best friend about what i wanted the characters to be like, what i wanted to make clear about them, what was going to happen ... i ended up writing 4 pages (single line spacing) and afterwards things were a lot clearer...

[Evergreenleaf]

Believe it or not, a novelette is between short story and novella, actually. Mine's around 24 pages, I think.
I thought it was a short story up to 50 pages, then it's a novella up to 100. Oh well, it really works much better to have something between, because most short stories aren't more than 20. Thanks RobinHood!

[RobinHood3000]

Well, most Internet resources are fuzzy on the distinctions in that particular region of the word count landscape, but I figure it's a novelette if you can't read it in just one (convenient) sitting.

[SleepyWitch]

Ryduce maybe the most important point is: do you know what you wanna write about or do you 'just' have a vague feeling that you want to write a novel? (no offence, I'm the same)
when i started writing my novel/novella, i knew that i want to write this story, no matter how crappy it's gonna be, it's just something i have to do.... then i tried to think about what it is i want to express, beyond the plot and characters and about how i'm going to achieve that... once I knew what it is i want to say, things sorted themselves out and the characters and main plot just popped up from i dunno where. that doesn't mean i rigidly stick to this crude outline.. when i come up with funny little episodes or interesting twists while I'm working on it, i include those, if they fit in with the characters or are relevant in some way....

hey TodHackett thanks for quoting John Irving (my fave writer :) ). i think you've brought up a very important point there... i think everybody should do what they're best at, e.g. if you're good at characters, write a character-driven novel, if you're good at plots, do a plot-driven one... also, i think, everybody should try to find their personal voice/vision.. of course, we're all influenced by the stuff we read, but there's no point in trying to write like somebody else... i think there's a passage about that in The World According to Garp something along the lines of no matter how weird or insignificant your work is, it's important to have a personal vision and make use of the right wo imagine the world in a personal way....
blahblahblah, I'm boring everyone to tears, good night :) :lol:

[blp]

I might be an unreliable advisor since I abandoned my novel after about four years work - with no regrets. There's something I think is key, though: learn grammar - not so much for the rules or terminology, but for the logic of it, which is, most of all, about conveying what you want to without repetition and without inadvertently contradicting yourself. Strunk and White's very short book The Elements of Style is a classic on this subject. I don't mean to imply that your grammar is awful, (though 'there are no secret formulas' is right, not 'there is...'), but I know from working as a copy editor that almost everyone has room for improvement.

Other than that, I agree with the suggestion that you start with shorter work, though not necessarily short stories. I'm more for not deciding what your initial sketches are going to be at all, just taking a lot of notes on what interests you. As Tod Hackett's excellent advice suggests, it's key to be working in relation to things outside yourself, whether other writer's work or things in the real world. Like a painter, you can be doing a lot of preparatory work - character descriptions, rants, landscapes, quick plot outlines, dialogues (become an eavesdropper): any of it might end up in a more polished piece eventually, and some of it will suggest ideas.

By the way, Mr Hackett, your approach sounds interesting. Any chance of seeing any of it posted on the forum?

[TodHackett]

By the way, Mr Hackett, your approach sounds interesting. Any chance of seeing any of it posted on the forum?

BLP--

Ahhh, the screw turns! Well, that's what I get for opening my mouth (keyboard?)

The truth is this: I am preparing the first 50 pages of my manuscript for submission to a contest. It is through Wilkes University in PA; You can read about it here:

http://www.wilkes.edu/pages/1159.asp

The deadline is March 1st (postmarked), which gives me six more days. Right now I have the first 43 pages-- a solid draft with about three small holes (places where I've written in "DESCRIBE" or "EXPAND". When I'm writing, I use all caps to note stuff that needs re-drafting). I am taking today off from work to edit and expand things.

As for the next 50 pages (which they will request if I'm one of the 8 or so finalists, chosen from a field of roughly 600), I have the quantity but not the quality or coherence. That's next on my plate. But if the contest even asks for the next 50 pages, it means I've made the cut-off for "finalist", which is good enough to put in my tenure file, I should think.

I would be happy to share a passage, but the one I'm thinking would make the most sense on its own runs from pages 16-29, so there's a bit of a length issue. If there is no length issue, I would be happy to post more. Where should I post it?

And, of course, if I post it I will fully expect comments and criticism. (Preferably by next Tuesday, but I'll take what I get).

-Mark-

[blp]

Sounds like you may be a bit busy right now, but if you really want comments while you're in the thick of it, I'll have a go. Next Tuesday might be pushing it, but I'll try. I think there's a restriction on post lengths, but you can go on to another post. The place to post your own fiction is here in General Writing I believe.

[Ryduce]

Sorry I didn't respond sooner,but I didn't realize that anyone replied.

I actually did consider writing a short story because it just seemed logical to me to start out smaller,but I feel urged to just go for it.

I have concluded that there is no right or wrong way to write a novel.I just have to go for it on my own and take my chances.


Thanks for the advice. :D