Novel Writing For Wanna-Be's^Tm: A Writer-Friendly Guidebook

NOVEL WRITING FOR WANNA-BE’S™

A WRITER-FRIENDLY GUIDEBOOK

Sam McCarver

iUniverse, Inc.

New York Lincoln Shanghai

NOVEL WRITING

FOR WANNA-BE’S™

A WRITER-FRIENDLY GUIDEBOOK

Copyright © 2005 by Sam McCarver

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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ISBN-13: 978-0-595-35053-7 (pbk)

ISBN-13: 978-0-595-79759-2 (ebook)

ISBN-10: 0-595-35053-4 (pbk)

ISBN-10: 0-595-79759-8 (ebk)

Printed in the United States of America

Contents

INTRODUCTION

PART ONE

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

PART TWO

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 1 6

CHAPTER 17

PART THREE

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER 22

APPENDIX A

APPENDIX B

CHRONOLOGY OF THE NOVEL

ORIGINS OF THE MYSTERY NOVEL

INTRODUCTION

We’re All Wanna-bes, at First—Aren’t We?

More often than not, in the beginning, people who want to write start from some other place. Many have day jobs, and some have had them for many years. They’ve had a life, other than the writing life, and that’s good, in a way, because they’ve had some experiences they can draw upon in their writing.

We learn about writing, first of all, through reading. We decide what kinds of books we enjoy reading, and typically later want to write those kinds. If we enjoy romances, we may write one. If mysteries are our cup of tea, that may be what we write. But before plunging into the writing itself, some preparation is a good idea, to get you on the right track, so you can learn the fundamentals, and ultimately to save you time from the false starts that an unschooled approach might produce. This book is designed to help the new writer, particularly one who aspires to write a novel, by presenting the basics in an interesting, organized and visual way—visual in the sense of providing examples, lists, and case studies easily accessed and as good supplementation for the narrative discussions of the main elements of a novel.

Writing Aids

I’ve found in classes I teach that aspiring novelists require and also appreciate pointed, relevant examples and illustrations that help them deal with specific topics, such as characters, plot, scenes, dialogue, writing style, format, description, emotion, and suspense. They want to see lists of choices, identification of ideas, descriptions of techniques, and tips on writing. They need information on structure and manuscripts, and words, and language to improve their writing style and voice, presented in a way that enables them to see the information, rather than simply being told about it. Writers thrive on case studies and prototypes, and they can best be presented visually. This book does these things.

In this process, all major aspects of novel-writing are covered—how to create an empathetic character, how to formulate an intriguing plot, reasons for the importance of writing your book in the form of scenes rather than largely in narration, the need for relevant and concise dialogue, how to describe settings and people, and more. Here you will find all the theory and practical methods of how to structure a novel, how to begin it, how to grip and hold the reader, and how to achieve the key objectives of a novelist. Special chapters also compare and contrast the nature of writing several special, popular types of novels, including mysteries, novels for children, and historicals.

Examples and Illustrations

The concepts in the discussions of novel elements and content are reinforced with many important illustrations such as checklists, examples of form, proper presentation and structure, tips to aid your writing, examples of scenes and mini-scenes that illustrate writing techniques, and novel manuscript case studies. They are a unique and vital part of this book and are integrated into the texts of chapters. For example, reasons and methods for doing character biographies, casts of characters, and a thoughtful, balanced selection of character names are explained. Reasons for the need for a short plot summary, a chapter-by-chapter outline, and a synopsis are stressed and their purposes are differentiated. A method and topics for a Character Biography are included in a chapter on characters.

Showing a focus on children’s novels, that chapter includes a Children’s Novel Case Study. A chapter on dialogue lists important don’ts in handling dialogue. A quiz on your novel is presented in a separate chapter for evaluation of your book. And there are other convenient lists of first sentences of novels, dialogue lines, appendix summaries of the history and background of novels, and the origins of mystery stories and novels.

Therefore, you have several choices in studying—you can read through the book sequentially, such as when you first acquire it. Or, you can use the chapter number descriptions to review a specific topic, such as Characters. Or, if you want to refer quickly to a particular list or example or case study, you may use the Alphabetical Index of Examples, Lists and Formats to go directly to that topic by page number. These features are made very convenient, practical and visual for your study of the writing of novels.

Your Writing Style

Emphasis is placed also on writing style and effectiveness, on making a good choice of words, on language usage, and on how best to present your characters,

scenes and dialogue in your story. An important section of the book deals with how to address a possible need to expand a novel which is too short to meet your length target, or to find ways to shorten an overly-long novel to make it fit into any limitation as to word count.

Applying the practical examples and case studies in this book to your own novel will improve your understanding of your novel’s requirements, and move it along more rapidly. Preparing biography sheets for your characters, for instance, or writing your synopsis following the prototype, tailors these ideas to your special needs.

PART ONE

WRITING YOUR NOVEL

CHAPTER 1

YOUR PLAN FOR PREPARATION, AND YOUR OBJECTIVES

Success in writing means what you want it to mean. It’s subject to definition, and it has been said, To be successful, define success your way. There are at least five levels of success that can be targeted as you begin writing novels, all addressed in this book.

First: Learn the basics. This book provides everything you need for that. Second: Complete the writing of your novel—a great achievement, in itself. Third: Prepare your manuscript well for publication with effective editing. Fourth: Getting published. How to market your work by sending queries, is here. Fifth: A great variable, perhaps making some money from the publishing process.

Let’s consider success as being of the third kind—finishing your novel, editing it, and producing a manuscript that is fit and ready for publishing. To help keep that goal in mind, following is a list of things to do first, before you even begin chapter one of your story, to prepare yourself for your writing of novels. After you learn the basics and edit your work, you’ll find these points provide a good foundation for dealing with that third level of success when you’re ready to market your manuscript to agents and editors.

10 Steps in Preparing to Write A Novel

1. Commit to putting in the necessary time and giving some priority to the study of writing, any necessary research, and the writing itself. Write regularly.

2. Read and study recently-published novels like the one you will write, noting how the author deals with story, characters, dialogue, description, narration, and structure, and note the lengths of chapters and the book.

3. Determine the point of view in which you will write—1st person, or in 3rd person singular, or in 3rd person multiple-viewpoint.

4. Choose your tense, which is recommended to be past tense, the most common form used in novels.

5. Establish the length of your novel, generally 60,000 to 65,000 words for new paperbacks, 75,000 to 80,000 for hardcovers.

6. Select a resonant working title, one that has a connection with your story, perhaps an allusion to another source.

7. Buy some books on writing, such as Strunk & White’s, The Elements of Style and some how-to books, and build a small library, and study these books.

8. Subscribe to a writer’s magazine such as Writer’s Digest or The Writer.

9. Write a short, one-paragraph plot summary summarizing the essence of the book.

10. When you have the story more in mind, then write a 3 to 5 page synopsis telling the entire story of the book including the conclusion, plus an outline for the first 2 or 3 chapters, consisting of one paragraph for each chapter indicating the content of it.

Objectives, From An Author’s Standpoint

1. Intrigue Your Reader

This objective is certainly true as to the first pages of your manuscript. You want to interest the reader in your story—in many cases, the reader being an agent or editor you want to convince to take on your book. You may place the story in an exotic or interesting setting, such as Alaska or Switzerland, or you might just set it in your home town, which you make interesting. Put your main character into the middle of an event occurring, such as learning of a murder or investigating a crime scene, or write a scene with conflict or rage that portends of coming disaster. Introduce your intriguing main character, one a reader can have empathy with, but one with some rough edges, some attitude, and a lot of spine.

In the first pages, hook as described above. But beyond this, plan every scene and chapter to hook the reader’s attention and curiosity. At the end of each scene and chapter, move the reader forward into the next one, by planting a new thought, by leaving something undone, by introducing a new element, by implying that there is danger ahead.

2. Entertain Your Reader

Remember, a novel is entertainment, not a message, and requires little theme, unless it is designed as a literary piece. Put in surprises, twists and turns, suggesting something dangerous could be next, an uncertainty about the outcome, interesting main character revelations and relationships to others, travels to other places, exciting and different dialogue, new characters intruding upon the scene, or unexpected things happening.

The book must continue to maintain a flow of unreduced readability through what is called the big middle. To hold interest, things must continue to happen, changes in the direction of the story must occur, a steadfastness of the main character toward getting the job done must persist, and indications must be that, despite hard knocks he or she may take, your main character is determined to win and will win—all of which has the reader wanting your character to win, and willing if not anxious to stick with the story to see that does in fact happen.

3. Satisfy Your Reader

After some dead ends and interim failures and crises, the main character reaches the final crisis, which then becomes the climax, the very highest point in the book, often in a mystery including a successful personal confrontation with the criminal. In an exciting, smashing climax, the main character wins, and in it, or afterward, subplots are resolved, the romantic interest is fulfilled, and the book concludes with satisfaction for the reader.

CHAPTER 2

YOUR FIRST QUESTIONS AND DECISIONS

Who Writes—and Why?

What did writers do before they began to write? The Bronte sisters and Jane Austen led sheltered lives, yet wrote classic stories. Agatha Christie was a married woman with a child when her first Hercule Poirot novel was published. Raymond Chandler was an oil executive and auditor who lost his job during the depression and decided he could write as well as authors writing Black Mask magazine stories. J. K. Rowling was a young mother. Today, most writers are or were something else first—salesperson, auditor, homemaker, teacher, attorney, psychiatrist, psychologist, hotel employee, cop.

Another thing writers have in common, authors say, is the dedication that requires them to spend long hours turning out pages in an enjoyable, but lonely, way. Some people want to have a book in print, but they don’t want to devote the time to learn how to write, or to do the writing itself. But writing a book is achievable, although time-consuming: Learn the rules, then write one new good page a day and in a year you’ll have 365 pages of a first draft done.

Why do people write? Sometimes it’s to tell the story of their life. Usually that’s not publishable unless unique. Sometimes it comes from an exciting experience. Sue Grafton’s father wrote mysteries and she writes mysteries. Coincidence? Arthur Conan Doyle didn’t have a busy medical practice, so he wrote stories about Sherlock Holmes. He put a doctor in them, patterned somewhat after himself. Raymond Chandler, out of work and a reader of mystery stories, turned to writing pulp fiction stories, since he enjoyed reading them as much as he enjoyed drinking. Drinking, incidentally, for some reason and some authors, seems to go with writing. Chandler didn’t give it up, nor did Hemingway, nor F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Authors often look inside themselves when they write—some for self-expression, some because they have a story to tell, some because they want people to read their writing, some to make money. But most write because they like to write. They’re all good reasons.

Many people would like to write about their lives, wanting to pass on messages to those who read their books. Perhaps this works in a how-to book, where specialized knowledge is given, but it is not what novels are all about. They are about entertainment, not messages. If you want to send a message, use email, not a novel. Readers don’t search for a moral or a deep theme in a novel—they look for something to entertain them.

So, don’t preach. Don’t put in political opinions of your view of the world. Don’t try to write the Great American Novel. Give your reader some interesting and intriguing reading, something that readers can become pleasantly involved in for hours, absorbed in your story, vicariously, as if seeing the events and actions, through your characters.

Why does a novel have to entertain? Because every book has to compete today with TV and movies and radio and the internet and other books, all wanting to entertain people in a visual way. Writing is a very competitive enterprise. John Steinbeck said Writing makes horseracing look like a solid business.

Women buy 80% of both fiction and non-fiction books. So it’s good to put something in your book to appeal to women. Like, romance, maybe? Like a strong, likeable female character? The first novel was called Pamela, written by a man in 1740, in the form of letters, from a young woman to her parents. It was very popular.

Here’s another first. The typewriter was perfected in 1867 and in 1880, Mark Twain pushed the envelope, submitting the first book manuscript typed entirely on a typewriter. Now 130 years later in the computer age we have a great advantage over previous writers if we use that technology to save time and effort and write a better novel.

Some 200 years ago in his poem Don Juan, George Gordon—Lord Byron—told us why he wrote, why he published his writing. Here it is—

"But, ‘Why then publish?’—There are no rewards of fame or profit when the world grows weary.

I ask in turn—Why do you play at cards?

Why drink? Why read?—To make some hour less dreary.

It occupies me to turn back regards

On what I’ve seen or pondered—sad or cheery.

And what I write I cast upon the stream

To sink or swim—I have had, at least—my dream.’"

Getting published can fulfill a dream—but trying to get published without a good plan can become a nightmare. This book stresses fundamentals that may help you get your manuscript published, whether through a national publisher, small press, or on the internet. Some books, also, may just need to be written, to satisfy the author. Success is achieving whatever your goal is, but we will concentrate on what is needed for publication.

Our Reading and Writing Heritage

The past is prologue. We learn from reading the great novels of the past, about plot, about characters, about revelation of feelings and emotions, about adventure and imagination and human nature, we read the novels of today, and we can surmise what will develop in the future. The style of writing has changed in the two hundred years to become much more visual, with more scenes and dialogue. As writers today we should write in the current fashion, expanding elements that have been established traditionally—the need for characterization, emotion, and revelation, in adventures that can be visualized and enjoyed vicariously by readers. Although the classics began it all, actually, the best source for studying writing is not in the older classic books in your library, but either on the shelves of new fiction there, or, more likely, in your local bookstore, where you can select books recently published in styles currently accepted and enjoyed by readers of today.

This book will review these norms, and the realm and genre within which your novel would likely appear. The styles and practices other successful writers use will help you in forming your own style of writing, so you’ll find case studies, examples, and tips that will give you guidance in establishing your own style and voice.

Before plunging into writing, everyone’s first goal should be to absorb some advice as to how to write a book. A second goal is to finish your novel. That’s a year’s work. An ordinary person with some study and much application and determination can get books published and some can even make it big. Two words prove that premise: Harry Potter.

Today’s Novel Categories

Here are some of the primary categories and some authors in each:

1. Women’s Fiction or Romance: The largest-selling fiction category in America.

This category contains many sub-groups as structured by publisher guidelines. Ask the publisher for the guidelines for the particular sub-genre you expect would include your novel, when complete. The original romantic novel, the Gothic, has branched out today into many subgenres to meet expanding and realistic tastes of modern readers.

2. Mysteries: The second-largest-selling category and a large umbrella covering related genres, excluding only true crime. Some examples of mystery categories and authors:

Classic whodunit (Agatha Christie)

Hardboiled (Raymond Chandler, Robert Spenser, Sue Grafton)

Softboiled, Cozies, Malice Domestic (Janet Evanovitch)

Thrillers (heart-pounding) (John Kellerman)

Suspense (edge of seat) (John Grisham)

Espionage (John Le Carre, Tom Clancy)

Historical (Anne Perry)

Police procedural (Ed McBain)

3. Other Primary Genres or Categories, and some examples of authors

Coming of