Introduction
I’m writing this book as a guide for anyone who wishes to commit themselves to the task of beginning and completing a novel within a year’s time. Here I will give you all the knowledge I have about writing, and rewriting, fiction.
Writing a novel is not nearly as difficult as some people would make it out to be. Anyone who communicates verbally, or by sign, is a writer of sorts. Any manager, mother, counselor, teacher, or guy who hangs out on the corner telling tall tales is a writer-in-waiting.
What I will try to point out in the following pages is how you can redirect your natural abilities at communication into creative prose.
But before we begin our journey, I have to present you with a few caveats concerning the goal.
First, I am fairly certain that anyone who reads this book, and who applies its lessons with tenacity, will be able to produce a complete draft of a
short
novel. I emphasize the word “short” because I doubt if many first-time novelists will be able to complete a draft of some equivalent to
Bleak House
or
War and Peace
within the requisite time. I don’t promise a masterpiece, just a durable first novel of a certain length (let us say fifty to sixty thousand words).
Second, I am not promising that you will, necessarily, produce a book that is destined to be snapped up by the publishing world. It may be that you have the right story and the right words to interest a publisher. It might be that you have written a beautiful piece that no one is interested in. And, of course, your first attempt as a fiction writer might not come up to the standard set by the industry.
I can’t promise you worldly success, but I can say that if you follow the path I lay out here, you will experience the personal satisfaction of having written a novel. And from that point, anything is possible.
The body of this book is broken up into five essential sections. It starts out with the general disciplines and attitudes that a writer of fiction must adopt. These practices will see you past many of the emotional, intellectual, and psychological restraints that come to bear on almost every writer.
Next I will give an exhaustive explanation of the elements of fiction writing. Here I will talk about plot and story, character and character development, showing versus telling, and narrative voice. This section will be capped off with a discussion of poetry and how important that discipline is to any writer. These are the tools of the writer of fiction; without them, the story you wish to tell will lose its way and founder.
After presenting you with these tools, I will give you some choices about how you might start your book. I will also talk about the process of writing, explaining how to create a first draft—pretty much painlessly.
After learning how to go about writing and studying the tools with which to accomplish this task, you will find out about editing, which is another term for rewriting. Rewriting is the most important job for the novelist; this is where the real work begins. The first draft is little more than an outline of the novel you wish to write. Rewriting is where you make the story into song.
After this music lesson, we talk about the miscellaneous topics of genre, publishing, and aesthetics.
Once you read these few pages, I believe that you will be prepared to write a book of your own. From that point on, all you’ll need is the desire and the will to write your novel.
1.
The General Disciplines That Every Writer Needs
writing every day
The first thing you have to know about writing is that it is something you must do every day—every morning or every night, whatever time it is that you have. Ideally, the time you decide on is also the time when you do your best work.
There are two reasons for this rule: getting the work done and connecting with your unconscious mind.
If you want to finish this novel of yours within a year, you have to get to work! There’s not a moment to
I’m writing this book as a guide for anyone who wishes to commit themselves to the task of beginning and completing a novel within a year’s time. Here I will give you all the knowledge I have about writing, and rewriting, fiction.
Writing a novel is not nearly as difficult as some people would make it out to be. Anyone who communicates verbally, or by sign, is a writer of sorts. Any manager, mother, counselor, teacher, or guy who hangs out on the corner telling tall tales is a writer-in-waiting.
What I will try to point out in the following pages is how you can redirect your natural abilities at communication into creative prose.
But before we begin our journey, I have to present you with a few caveats concerning the goal.
First, I am fairly certain that anyone who reads this book, and who applies its lessons with tenacity, will be able to produce a complete draft of a
short
novel. I emphasize the word “short” because I doubt if many first-time novelists will be able to complete a draft of some equivalent to
Bleak House
or
War and Peace
within the requisite time. I don’t promise a masterpiece, just a durable first novel of a certain length (let us say fifty to sixty thousand words).
Second, I am not promising that you will, necessarily, produce a book that is destined to be snapped up by the publishing world. It may be that you have the right story and the right words to interest a publisher. It might be that you have written a beautiful piece that no one is interested in. And, of course, your first attempt as a fiction writer might not come up to the standard set by the industry.
I can’t promise you worldly success, but I can say that if you follow the path I lay out here, you will experience the personal satisfaction of having written a novel. And from that point, anything is possible.
The body of this book is broken up into five essential sections. It starts out with the general disciplines and attitudes that a writer of fiction must adopt. These practices will see you past many of the emotional, intellectual, and psychological restraints that come to bear on almost every writer.
Next I will give an exhaustive explanation of the elements of fiction writing. Here I will talk about plot and story, character and character development, showing versus telling, and narrative voice. This section will be capped off with a discussion of poetry and how important that discipline is to any writer. These are the tools of the writer of fiction; without them, the story you wish to tell will lose its way and founder.
After presenting you with these tools, I will give you some choices about how you might start your book. I will also talk about the process of writing, explaining how to create a first draft—pretty much painlessly.
After learning how to go about writing and studying the tools with which to accomplish this task, you will find out about editing, which is another term for rewriting. Rewriting is the most important job for the novelist; this is where the real work begins. The first draft is little more than an outline of the novel you wish to write. Rewriting is where you make the story into song.
After this music lesson, we talk about the miscellaneous topics of genre, publishing, and aesthetics.
Once you read these few pages, I believe that you will be prepared to write a book of your own. From that point on, all you’ll need is the desire and the will to write your novel.
1.
The General Disciplines That Every Writer Needs
writing every day
The first thing you have to know about writing is that it is something you must do every day—every morning or every night, whatever time it is that you have. Ideally, the time you decide on is also the time when you do your best work.
There are two reasons for this rule: getting the work done and connecting with your unconscious mind.
If you want to finish this novel of yours within a year, you have to get to work! There’s not a moment to
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