How to Write a Novel Pt. 2
Welcome to the second part of my “How to Write a Novel” series.
With the first installment, I told you, young writer, to have something to say. I should add that this something ought to be something you feel strongly about. I hope that goes without saying, but to be sure. You don’t want to start a novel about animal cruelty if you aren’t a vegan or a member of PETA, or something. Remember that this is the soul of your book, it’s what should drive you when the pure joy of writing itself is temporarily exhausted. You want to get up in the morning, and think, “Right now, people all over the world are massacring innocent carrots. I must save them.”
Or something like that. Moving on.
Knowing Your Story
This is equal parts personal and universal. Sequentially, this should occur almost concurrently with the next post in the series (which will talk about inspiration).
I’ve never been one to plan my story. Except when writing a screenplay, I’ve never mapped events out, only kept a loose list of things I wanted to happen. Between these nodes of concrete events was the rest of the story, and that I made up as I went along. I follow this mode of operation in all aspects of my writing. The characters develop subconsciously, as does the theme and plot. This may not work for all of you. And it doesn’t always work for me. Sometimes I get stymied. So it’s important to know what you want conveyed, and whether in a concrete fashion or not, what you want to happen.
The method of your conveyance is character. All themes and I’d say half of the actions in most any novel need to be brought across by your characters. This means you can’t break in with a deus ex thema to explain your morals, nor act like some weak-kneed Evelina and let outside forces speed the plot. So, briefly.
Characters- I’ll be the first to admit that I can’t handle a great number of characters at once. I don’t deal with mobs well, and my writing style doesn’t allow for multiple voices to be heard at once. But it’s equally hard to say anything but “pretty scenery” without some exchange. Hence, two main characters in my first novel. Keep this in mind when coming up with your characters– you probably don’t want a Power Ranger cast worth of main characters, unless you plan on relegating them to the depth of ROYGBIV.
Once you know at least the quantity and type of main characters you want, a good exercise (that I’ve never tried) is to write, whether in brainstorm format or no, their backstory. From birth to present. Age 3, fell off trike and skinned knee–formative event, first sight of blood. Age 7, showed his to see hers. Age 8, father left. Age 9, met best friend.
That sort of thing. Maybe even write a short story or two with them. Or scenes from the book that you’ll never put in. (You’ll do this anyway, via editing. End up cutting scenes from the book that the reader will never know about but happen in your head, nevertheless, and end up impacting the course of character development.) Remember that, at the most basic level, the relationship the reader has to have with your characters is love. Love the protagonist. Whether it’s love or love to hate, that’s inconsequential. But you can’t have an unlikeable character. If you do, you have to be ready to give them their just desserts.
Once you have a solid conception of your characters, you let them roam free in your…
Plot- Which, if you’re noticing my theme, will happen organically. You’ll find your characters bouncing around in this world you created and acting nearly independently of you. That’s how it often happens, anyway.
The plot is the least subconscious thing you’ll be working with in your book. It’s something that requires harder thought and it’s the framework that you want to have most in place by the time you start writing. However, you’ll find, like everything in writing, that you’ll be surprised in the middle of the night by some twist that your characters bring you to, and you’ll have to break things apart and reorganize them. Oftentimes your prof or teacher will tell you it’s a good idea to put all of your plot-nodes onto notecards, or organize them in any other such way. Not a bad idea. Again, something I’ve never done.
When I started writing my first novel I had a good basis for my work in both temporal directions–that is, I knew what the past was, and I knew what the far future was. What was in between, I’d fill in. Don’t fight it if you get lightningstruck and your last scene comes to you before you write the first. You’ll be amazed at what you’ll make span the gap. But, for the breakdown, it’s really, truly important to have guideposts set up along the way. Know your beginning, middle, and end. And if not that, know what’s near the end. Have little scenes planned out, those little inspirations you get throughout the day, set up like signposts. It seems forceful, maybe counterproductive to the creative process, but you’ll be surprised, again, at what your own skill will produce. A scene here and there keeps your plot linear.
Aristotlean writers will tell you that plot comes first in a book. It is prime. I don’t agree, but. A strong plot is never a bad thing. A way to get a strong plot is to craft a Major Dramatic Question. This is what drives a reader to turn the page if love of character and prose fail or don’t register immediately. What’s going to happen next? In thrillers, mysteries, etc., the MDQ is easy to pin down. Will Dan Brown’s stock professor character stop the pope from crushing the Sphinx with his giant hat? Will Nicolas Cage’s hair terrify the bad guy into submission before he crashes the plane into Alcatraz, with the Constitution in hand?
In more literary fiction, the MDQ becomes harder to suss out. In The Sun Also Rises, what’s the MDQ? Seriously, I defy you to give me a good one. What you’ll end up with is something like, “What will happen to Jake, to Jake and Brett, etc.,?” But that’s not the whole of the book. The play between Jake and Brett, while crucial in providing tension in some places, is half the book, tops. So what of the other half? In All the Pretty Horses, the same problem arises. “Will John Grady woo Alejandra?” Maybe, yeah, not bad. But he meets her nearly a hundred pages into the novel. So don’t be afraid to be at a loss for an MDQ. If you can break your book up into several, so much the better.
Before I sign off I want to stress two things. One: I put plot secondary for a reason. In literary fiction, I think today’s readers want to get to know characters more than they want to discern plot. So put your focus on lifelike, endlessly deep protagonists and antagonists. If you do well enough here, the reader will follow them to the dentist and back.
Two: Take everything I say with a grain of salt. Writing is not something that can be taught without flaw. It takes a certain amount of talent that I don’t think can be given by anything after birth, along with a lunatic dedication. Remember too that I’m writing this guide for the semi-literary to literary fiction crowd. If you’re not in that corner, play fast and loose with these guidelines.
Here’s a good link to Aristotle’s Theory of Tragedy. Very valuable stuff, there. Smarter than me, surely.
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Great advice. I have to admit, I’ve come to see plot as being incredibly important in the past few years, perhaps chiefly so — BUT that may be because I was so bad at it before, lol.
I also loved that you said this: ‘This may not work for all of you. And it doesn’t always work for me. Sometimes I get stymied.”
Because the thing is, I think every writer is different, and to a degree, every project (even for the same writer) may be different too. I keep thinking, Oh, I’ve found what works for me! Only to find that what once worked, only worked once.
That’s not to say that *nothing* is held constant. But unfortunately there are no “3 easy steps” to my writing process, and I would hazard a guess to say that I’m not the only one who feels that way.
It’s interesting to read this now, given how far I’ve come with my piece in the last few months. There’s certainly argument to be made that the way Kori and I have approached this project is disorganized at best; in fact, I would have guessed you would be one to say that.
We started out with a framework, to be sure, but the nature of our arrangement – passing things back and forth – has meant that we often write in sections or clips, and they aren’t always in chronological order. To be sure that’ll mean an extra layer of editing in there, one to check for constancy and timeliness. But it’s what works for us now.
Still, it’s interesting to see how the overall plot has changed. Our initial framework has been through several iterations, and although the end result is the same, our characters have done differently in some situations than we expected at first. The backstory has come gradually; we have learned our characters over the years, and the ones I am closest to I can slip on like a second skin. If I am handed any situation, however, strange, I could tell you how my girl would react. Because I know her.
I agree with you that a lot of readers today are more interested in the human element. Most of my favorite books are driven more by character than plot. Take TGoST, for instance. Arundhati Roy has great prose, but her method in this book is disjointed, and the story is… well, it’s largely already happened. We see the world through the eyes of characters living with the aftermath. The reader largely seeks to discover what has happened. It’s not the type of book I would write, but her characters and writing are so engaging that I’m always driven to finish.
One series that I read (fantasy by Terry Goodkind, not really your thing… though there is some epic warmaking going on) uses several different characters per book to convey the story. It works out perfectly well, largely since all of the main characters are folks I find interesting or likeable or both. But the only book of his that completely falls flat for me is one that where he tries to tell the story almost completely through new characters. We don’t even see the protagonists from the other books until the very end. This is a difficult shift for such an established audience, but what makes it even worse is that the replacements aren’t likeable. One is barely even human, and the other is sort of a one-dimensional wuss. It’s hard to see how he managed to go from some of the other books to this. My guess is that he lost track of the human question.
Too many rules.
It’s a journey. It’s different for everyone.
Kristan: You’re in good company. Aristotle held plot above all.
Ant: It’s a literary fiction thing, I think. While you fall in love with the characters in Twilight, you don’t fall in love with them for their progression, you fall in love with what they do. Or maybe you just lust after them.
Clowncar: Not so useful a comment when I’ll be teaching this sort of thing next fall.
Well, not useful at all, in that context. Forgive my churlishness. A bit of a knee-jerk reaction, that.
I agree with much of what you say. And the bit about “lunatic dedication” absolutely.
I just ribbed you back. I know as well as you that there’s a lot that can’t be taught about writing, and nothing about it should be formulaic. But you have to make a compromise if you’re to try to teach it anyway. I think of this sort of diatribe as a springboard, platform, what have you, for whatever creativity the reader has.
There is, of course, the rule soon to come: A good writer can ignore all rules.