Posts Tagged With: writing

This past month I’ve gotten inspiring emails from all sorts of new writers, from high school students to retirees. One thing is clear: you’re never too old (or too young) to write a novel. If you’ve been thinking about writing a book — and who hasn’t? — remind yourself that the best day to start is today.

I’ve fielded a few writing questions lately about some crucial writing basics, like manuscript format and chapter length. If you have a lingering question, don’t make the mistake of guessing at the answer. Find out for sure. Who knows? You might be surprised!

Q: Hello there, I was just about to start my own novel and wanted to know if I double space everything or no?

A: Yes, in your final manuscript, you want to double-space everything except your contact information. It’s easy; just go up to your paragraph spacing and choose 2.0. (Or if you’re using a typewriter, just click the little spacing lever.) Also, remember to give yourself one-inch margins all around.

Q: What size of font do publishers use?

A: Your finished manuscript should be in 12 point Courier New or Times New Roman. Courier used to be the only acceptable font; now, more and more agents are requesting Times. When you’re finally ready to submit your novel, check the submission guidelines of the places you’re sending your manuscript. For your drafts, just use whatever font is comfortable.

Q: How long is a novel?

A: The exact range depends on your genre. In most cases, a novel should be more than 50,000 words and usually less that 120,000. It needs to tell the story of your main character setting out to achieve a specific goal, and then show how that character achieves it (or fails).

Q: Do I decide where a chapter ends? Or does that come later with an editor?

A: You decide on the length of your chapters. In fact, your chapters are one of the best ways to control the pacing of your novel. Take a careful look at published books like the one you want to write: How long are those chapters? How do they end? How do they begin? A little studying goes a long way.

Bonus tip: you can make your chapters as long or as short as you want; Dostoyevsky wrote chapters that went on forever; Kurt Vonnegut’s chapters were sometimes only one word. The key is to make each chapter change something in your story and move it one step closer to the end.

Q: I’m just starting my first novel. Can you recommend a good book of writing tips?

A: I highly recommend the book The 38 Most Common Fiction Writing Mistakes by Jack M. Bickham. You can find it your library or on Amazon for a buck. It’s priceless.

Got a writing question? Don’t see the answer here? Just ask me. And in the meantime, have fun writing!

Q: I read an article that you wrote for the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers about beating writer’s block and I have a follow-up question.  You start out by determining who the story is about, but in your article it’s only about one protagonist. My novel has strong romantic elements so it’s really about two people and their relationship in addition to the non-romantic part of the story.  I’m curious if you have any advice for a situation like this.  Thanks!

A: Thanks for asking!  That’s a great question.  Writing a romance novel can seem impossible to plan out, because there’s so much going on at once: her story, his story and the story of their relationship together.  But with a little work, you can separate the stories and figure out each one, then weave them back together.

The trick is to focus on just one character at a time.  Pick one of your main characters and ask this crucial question:  What does this character want the most?  And the follow-up question:  Why?

At its core, every story is about somebody wanting something and not getting it.  The beginning of the story is where we find out what the character wants, the middle is where she keeps going after it no matter what, and the end is where she finally gets it (or doesn’t). 

You can make things more complex by having a character switch goals midway through the story, once she discovers a new and even more important objective.  For example, she might start out just trying to pull off an elegant dinner party without incident… until she runs out of coffee and ends up flirting with the hunky neighbor upstairs.  (Hey, it worked for the Taster’s Choice commercials.)  But even if her goals change, at any given point in the story she still needs to pursue something specific, and we need to wonder if she’ll reach it.  That suspense is what keeps readers turning pages.

So my advice is this: start with one character, and go through each of the steps:

1) WHO is this about?

2) What does that character WANT?

3) WHY does the character want it?

4) What will the character DO to achieve it?

5) What stands in the WAY of the character achieving that goal?

6) How are things RESOLVED in the end?

Then do the same thing for the other lead character.  You might find that your characters want more than one thing — that’s good.  Those other goals are subplots, and your novel will need several of them so that it’s layered and complex.  Just answer those questions for each goal.  Later, you can take everything you’ve written and weave it all together.  You’ll write a lot of notes, but the material you create will form the basis for your entire story, one that is engaging, complex and un-put-downable.

Do you have a writing question? Need a writing coach to help you solve a problem with your novel? Just ask! And if you try this idea and like it, let me know!

To win National Novel Writing Month, you have to write 50,000 words in 30 days.  Sound impossible?  Not if you break it down to a daily word count of 1,667 words.  Heck, bump it up just a couple hundred words more and you can take Sundays off.

Is it easy?  No, but then again, I usually write more than 50,000 words every month, so NaNo doesn’t seem like such a stretch for me.  And if I can do it, so can you.  If you want to win NaNoWriMo, you can, and these four easy writing tips can help you do it in style.  Follow them and before long you’ll know how to write a novel like a professional.  Does it get any better than that?

Step 1: Two Dogs, One Bone

Your main character (protagonist) wants something.  What is it, exactly?  Write it down.  Now think about the one person who stands in the way, preventing your protagonist from getting what she wants.  This enemy (also known as an antagonist) must want something that directly contradicts your main character’s desires.  If one character wants to save the world, the other wants to destroy it.  If one character wants to prove a suspect innocent, the other wants him hanged.  If one wants to unearth a secret, the other wants to keep it hidden.  You get the idea. 

Picture it like two dogs fighting over the same bone.  One one can have it.  At the end of the fight, someone is going to be very unhappy.

Step 2: Collect ‘Em All To Win

Over the course of your novel, your main character will take a journey, either literally or metaphorically.  There will be several distinct checkpoints on this journey, obstacles that must be overcome, places that must be visited, truths that must be found.  At each one, your character gains something invaluable: a clue, an insight, a new direction, something.  Each scene leads to the next in a sort of literary scavenger hunt, until your protagonist finally reaches her destination.

You can make the journey easier to write by mapping out the “tokens” your character must collect to “win” the story.  If it’s a murder mystery, for example, she needs to find enough clues to identify the killer.  If it’s a romance, she needs to overcome the issues that would otherwise doom the relationship.  What does your character need to find?

Step 3: Captain and Crew

One character does not a novel make.  For some reason, I see a lot of first novels focused on the loner, the outsider, the enigmatic stranger who holds allegiance to no one.  I think that’s a mistake, because the relationships between characters form a big part of what keeps readers hooked on a story.

Think of your main character like a captain on an old sailing ship.  To survive the lengthy voyage ahead, the captain needs a rock-solid understanding of his crew.  He needs to know who’s got which skills, who’s loyal and who might mutiny, who can be trusted to stand watch and who spends their off hours drinking and dicing below decks.  When the captain misjudges someone, things go terribly wrong.  So who’s in your main character’s crew?

Step 4: Houston, We Are Go For Launch

Once you’ve nailed down what your character wants, what she must do to get it, who stands in the way and who’s along for the ride, the last step is deceptively simple: just write it.  Sit down, turn off your internet and force yourself to start writing something.  Anything.  Don’t stop until you’ve hit your word count for the day.

If you’ve set up the first three steps properly, you’ll never be at a loss for what to write.  You’ll laugh in the face of writer’s block.  Because it all comes back to the same basic questions: What does my character want?  Why?  Who stands in the way?  What does my character need to do next?

Then… just write it.

NaNoWriMo Rules

Just in case you’re looking for the official NaNoWriMo rules, here they are, fresh-squeezed from the National Novel Writing Month website:

• Write a 50,000-word (or longer!) novel, between November 1 and November 30.
• Start from scratch. None of your own previously written prose can be included in your NaNoWriMo draft (though outlines, character sketches, and research are all fine, as are citations from other people’s works).
• Write a novel. We define a novel as a lengthy work of fiction. If you consider the book you’re writing a novel, we consider it a novel too!
• Be the sole author of your novel. Apart from those citations mentioned two bullet-points up.
• Write more than one word repeated 50,000 times.
• Upload your novel for word-count validation to our site between November 25 and November 30.

Do you have a writing question? Need a writing coach to help you solve a problem with your novel? Just ask! And if you try this idea and like it, let me know!