I’m of course always reading, studying, trying to improve. Experts tell us this is the character trait of a successful novelist and screenplay writer. It’s not something I’ve cultivated, it’s just how I am.
One of the things I’ve stressed is that if this isn’t an essential part of your personality, then you need to take steps to make that part of your personality!
Whenever I’ve taken up anything new, I try to immerse myself in it. I try to read everything on it I can get my hands on.
Writing a novel is daunting the first time you try it. It’s so daunting, such a huge job, that many people work at it for years upon years upon years and never see the end of the tunnel.
If that sounds like you, I’m telling you, it’s not as hard as your making it. You’re just floundering, and haven’t found your way. You can write a short novel in 30 days, edit it in another 30, and have it on your publisher’s desk by the end of 90 days.
What you really need is a blueprint, or a road map. Many books on writing novels will give you that blueprint, but no worries – I’m giving it to you now.
The beginning of a novel is called the set up. This is important. you must show your main character, called the protagonist, in their normal life. Why is this important? Because you want to show how their life has changed at the end of the story. This is important for the reader. You know you did your job well if they continue the novel in their imagination past the ending of the book.
The setup has to continue until you’ve firmly established this is their life – and no longer. Usually this takes chapters 1-3, but depending on how free or sparing you are with your words, this could take less time.
Now you have to move onto the Inciting Incident. This is the one incident that motivates the protagonist to do something. Here’s a simple math formula – if your protagonist allows things to happen, book=boring. If your protagonist makes things happen, book=good.
If you complain, “but my novel needs him to sit back and wait for things to happen!”, then your book is going to be lame. Sorry, but this is the facts. Your protagonist must DO something.
What must they do? Hey, look, I’m not writing your novel for you! Well, I could, but it would be really expensive! You have to decide for yourself what they’re going to do, and how they’re going to do it.
Now you have to invent all kinds of obstacles to their getting it!
In Lord of The Rings, Frodo is basically told by Gandalf he needs to bring the Ring to Rivendell. Well, now you’ve got the 9 riders after him. Merry and Pippin are trying to get him there, but they’re prone to taking the wrong way and getting them embroiled in adventures. They end up at Bree and getting into trouble there, and the 9 riders find their rooms – but they’ve fled.
See the setup of goal, and blocks? Frodo has one simple thing to do. If he gets the Ring to Rivendell, and Elrond tosses it into a smelting forge and that’s the end of it, you’ve got a dull short story.
So add Merry and Pippin, who’re going to lead Frodo into trouble.
Add the 9 riders. There’s now peril beyond a simple journey and getting lost.
Tom Bombadil serves as the Guardian of knowledge, and helps them, but only to a point, where they can be handed off to Elrond, the next Guardian of knowledge.
They get into a scrape at Bree. Weathertop and the Wraiths.
Nothing is simple about a simple journey from Hobbiton to Rivendell.
Then, after numerous adventures, he finally gets there – and is told he’s still got to go to Mordor and toss the Ring into the volcano it was forged in.
These are the setup and blocks. Frodo has simple tasks, but the blocks preventing him are legendary. It’s why the LOTR series has sold millions. Every step of the way sounds do-able, until you get to the whole “take it to Mordor, right under Sauron’s nose and watching eye, slip past all the watchers and sentries, bypass a million orcs, and destroy the ring.” And even THEN, Tolkien gives you a giant spider, armies of Orcs, The watchers, a waterfall, battles, the lands of the dead, forests of living trees, Sauruman, the palantir, flying wraiths, etc. Every roadblock is literally increasing tension literally to the point the books fail. And you know what keeps you reading, the frank admission from one character, right at the point you’re about to toss the book, that if all this was a book, they were at the point you’d want to toss the book! clever. It’s never been done before, and because Tolkien did it cleverly, it can never be done again!
Act 1 is 25% of your book, act 2 is 50% of your book, and act 3 is 25% of your book, including the epilogue.
So here’s the important part. You need plot points, 50-60 of them. One writer likes to describe them as “Story sparks”, something that your mind seizes on and thinks, “That’s really neat, I’m putting that in my book.” Weathertop is a story spark. Strider and the hobbits running into the stone trolls from the Hobbit is a story spark. The Barrow downs is a story spark. Technically, they’re called “plot points”. Dramatica calls them “signposts”, and the spaces between “journeys”. Whatever you call them, you need at least 40, and 60 is better. I can tell you that LOTR had more than 60 plot points in the first book alone.
“So, Do I just sit down and write out numbers 1-60, and just write down what my plot points are?”
Yup. The more you have, the better.
This is why I constantly say “plan your work, and work your plan.” Remember the 5P principle!
“How do I keep people reading?”
Promises and payoffs. If you promise something in the book, you’ve got to pay it off. My short story “The Island” had several promises – repeated references to the drowning of Mike (you knew before the end of the story that Ernie was going to drown Ruthie), the mention of the icepick in the store, the repeated information that only two could survive, and several mentions of 9 people on the island. Every murder was a payoff. The icepick was a payoff. Ernie drowning Ruthie was a payoff. The subtle antagonism between Cary and Ernie was a promise, and it had a payoff.
If you show a pistol as a decoration in act 1, it had better go off in act 2 or three. Someone’s got a bejeweled dagger? Someone better get stabbed with it. Cliff? Someone falls over it. Most of the time (here’s the joy of writing novels), you write something, and suddenly you realize you just wrote a promise of something. Now you know completely by accident that you’ve got to deliver the payoff!
Conclusion
This article alone isn’t enough to write a novel, but it’s enough to get you started! If you start going through my web site, you’ll run across a myriad of articles written to help you get your novel written.
The goal is – plan now. Because we’re writing a novel from January of 2018 through until March 30, 2018! I’ve got an entire series of writing tips on Twitter every day @NSReicher that will help poke and prod you into planning your novel, then writing it! I’ll host additional tips on my Facebook Author’s page, so check that out as well!
no more dreaming about writing a novel. You’re going to do it.
