Ever dreamed of writing a novel but didn't know where to start? Now's the perfect time to pick up your pen (or keyboard) and dive into the world of storytelling—no experience needed, just your imagination.
In a new series, author and critic Aimée Walsh offers some tips for the budding novelist.
There are two types of writers: those who plot every scene and every chapter; and those who know the narrative points they want to hit as the story develops. In other words: structure versus fluidity. I will start this piece by owning up to being in the latter camp. I'm currently writing my second novel and, as with my debut Exile, I sit down at my laptop and let the character living in my imagination take me to where the story needs to go. Now, this sounds very airy and vague, and it’s just as nerve-wracking writing that way as it is to explain to an editor that I’m working on imaginative vibes alone. But I have some tricks that I use to help me get around this fear-of-plotting.
I’ll outline them here:
Break the project down
I know I said in my previous entry that writing every day is not conducive, for me at least, to producing anything passable, never mind publishable. However, I do set myself 'word count’ targets over a long period of time, so I know that I won’t let the novel project completely fall by the wayside. It’s a balance. My trick is this: I know I want the novel to be between 70-90,000 words, roughly, though this is subject to change! I have a notion too at how long I would like to spend writing the first draft. A year or 18 months, say. I will then work out how many words I would like to write over a sustained period. For me, a decent amount of time to be checking in with the word count progress is around every 3 months. This 90-day time period allows for life to happen around the writing: holidays; Christmas; living away from the laptop screen and seeing the people you love. All of this is important to keep your sanity.
Be succinct
You’ll be asked this question a lot: so, what is your novel about? If you can’t explain it in an easy-to-digest way, it’s likely that nobody else will understand it. There are lots of people who need to ‘get’ the book before it even reaches a reader: agents, editors, copyeditors, proofreaders, publicists. Knowing what you want to convey is half the battle. Be confident in what you want your novel to say.
Consider your characters
If you don’t think your characters are believable, the reader will feel just as disconnected. Consider your characters as people in all their multifaceted elements. A good approach to this is to not think of characters as inherently ‘good’ or ‘bad’. Don’t impose moral judgements on your characters. It is great (and arguably necessary) to know what, if anything, the characters add to the narrative. Even if they add nothing substantial, they must be three dimensional. What are they likely to do in a particularly unsettling scenario? Let the character be impulsive, reactive.
Dialogue
This is the part of editing that I find the most enjoyable to really dig into. It’s a hard process, but the results can elevate a manuscript. One thing that will tank a novel is stilted dialogue, over-explaining through conversations, or mismatched vocabulary that a character wouldn’t use. To avoid these pitfalls, write conversations as if listening in to a chat. How does each specific person talk? What about speech patterns or dialect? Consider too the use of interruptions to the flow of speech. Create a natural flow with pauses, misunderstandings, etc.
Make your scenes make sense
In the editing phase of my debut novel, I discovered that in a previous draft I had written in an object that just appeared in the characters hand, as if out of nowhere. In my mind, I knew how it got there, but in that draft I didn’t tell the reader. Remember to think visually about your scenes. While you may know where or what is happening, the reader only knows what you tell them. Use this to your advantage. Don’t let them get caught up on a rogue detail. Be clear!
Take a deeper dive into the Get Creative series here.
