![]() ![]() ![]() After all, the plot or narrative is what many people talk about when they want to indicate that a book is compelling. For many people setting out to write for the first time, this might feel counterintuitive. Character: The first step to consider is who your characters are going to be. What’s more, you’ll need to find the ways to cultivate your own writing habits – the times and places you work best, whether you’re a morning writer or an evening one, or the kind of person who needs absolute quiet or background activity.ġ. While I am distinguishing the four essential elements of a novel that you need to consider when planning, it is important that these are developed together in parallel. However, while every author will write a novel differently, there are some common themes that occur again and again.Įven for those who launch straight into a novel, ploughing through a first draft in an attempt to ‘get something down’, these are the four main factors you need to consider for your major project: character, plot, place, and voice or style. Some writers like to plot out every event meticulously before they begin the first sentence others get bored if they know everything in advance, and instead treat fiction as a kind of experiment to see how characters will react. Some authors will sit down in their study – or even hire an office where they go to work every day – and work 9 to 5, while others will grab an hour or two at the end of the day after the children have gone to bed. The most important point to start from is that while there are a number of things you should consider when planning your book – such as characterisation, plotting or the style and voice of your work – there is no single golden rule for how to write a novel. ![]() More often, however, authors lack confidence, and worry about whether they are doing things ‘right’, which is why I’ll cover the essentials here to get you started. The book is written in their head without the need to commit a single word to the page. This is usually a lack of confidence, but occasionally an excess of it as well: one phenomenon among would-be writers is that talking about a project can give as much satisfaction as actually doing it. In this guide, I’ll show you some of the extra things you need to take into account when planning your book. The first is that, as King says, writing isn’t yet a habit: because we all have to write at some point (even if it’s no more than a text or social media post about our day), there is an assumption that knocking out 80,000 words or so is just like our regular writing activities – just more so. In my experience, two factors tend to hold back writers from completing their novel. But in order to be a novelist, you need to know more than this, such as how to create compelling characters and structure your plot. There’s no way around these two things that I’m aware of, no shortcut.’ King’s advice is about developing the habit of being a writer: writing every day will turn you into a writer. In his memoir On Writing (2010), Stephen King observes: ‘If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. ![]()
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