TECH: Get That Novel Started (6)

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Original Posting 13 Aug 2012

So, the book is Get That Novel Started! (And Keep It Going 'til You Finish) by Donna Levin.

Part one, called Getting Started, had five chapters. Start today, start small with 10 minutes every day, make sure you write during your 10 minutes, take care of your fears, and collect ideas. I think of this as the preparation chunk -- get the right habits in place. Part two, called The Taming of the Novel, has four chapters that really get you into the nitty-gritty, writing.

Chapter 6 is called Are We Writing Yet? And starts us on the path of developing the novel. But before you actually sit down and start bashing away at chapters, there is some more preparation and organizing to do. Here's what Donna suggests:

1. Write down your novel idea. What's the basic idea? This can be one sentence, or several pages. Just get the idea down. You may come up with some other thoughts about it as your writing them down, and go ahead and write those down too.

You may have several ideas. Write them down and see what they look like. Then, pick the one that you're going to develop now.

Spend a little time at this. You're going to invest some time and effort in growing this idea into a novel, you might as well pick one that you really like. It should be something you're really interested in and want to do.

Write the best book that you can write.

2. Layout the protagonist or main character. Think about what they are like, who they remind you of. Pick their name. Play with the names, but then pick one.

3. Write a short biography of your main character. Donna suggests 10 to 15 pages, describing the main events that shape this person. For example, did they have a happy or unhappy childhood and why? Where did they grow up? What were their first romantic encounters like? What kind of an education do they have?

You probably want to be more detailed about recent love affairs, friends, problems, personal achievements, or whatever impacts and shapes this character.

Finish up with a description of their present life. What do they look like, where do they live, how do they make a living? Who are the important people in their life, and how do they feel about them? What's the biggest problem they face? What do they think of themselves and the world?

Include anything that helps you to see and hear and feel this character.

You might want to try these extra bonus exercises. One is to interview your character. Another one is to get into the character's head and let the character describe their life in a monologue.

4. You've probably touched on or invented several secondary characters. Go ahead and make a list, with notes about who these characters are, whatever you know about them already. Then to help you learn a little bit more about each of them, make a list of 10 things that each of your characters wants. What do they desire, what are their goals, where do they want to go, what do they want to achieve?

This is going to help you start building towards plot, because some of these desires and wants are very likely to conflict.

"The building blocks of plot are conflicts. Conflict arises when a character wants something that he or she cannot have because of an obstacle, which is either within the character (internal conflict), exists in the outside environment, or comes in the form of another character wanting the opposite thing (external conflict)."

5. This is probably a good point to go back in look at the main idea again. You may want to revise it, adding things or just plain dropping things.

6. Donna recommends making a rough outline at this point. A couple of things here. One is that Donna stresses that this should be really rough, a safety net, not a road map. It's a way to organize the ideas you have and to experiment with putting them together in a sequence. Also, I think it's important to notice that this is more of a sketch of events and scenes than the sort of outline that we all learn to do in English class. The one that Donna did as an example basically has chapter by chapter summaries of the scenes -- two or three sentences in a paragraph for each scene. This is working notes.

7. Pick the point of view. More than likely, this will be third person limited, basically sitting on somebody's shoulder and occasionally dipping into their thoughts. But you need to decide which somebody you're going to take a ride with. "Who is going to tell the story? What person are you going to use -- first person or third person?"

8. Let's choose an opening scene. Donna points out that there are two issues here. First, where does the real story began? We want to start as late as possible, in the middle of the action. Second, what is dramatic enough to deserve a scene? We want something exciting, extraordinary to kick off the story. Jump into the story and reveal who the characters are through their actions.

Go ahead and write up that potential opening scene. You can change it later, but do the best you can with it.

All right? Idea, character studies, outline, and opening scene. Or as Donna ends the chapter, "To get that novel started: proceed from basic idea to character studies to outline to opening scene."

Get started!

EXERCISE: Borrowing from the Writing Excuses crew...

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

Original Posting 19 Aug 2012

Over here http://www.writingexcuses.com/2012/08/12/writing-excuses-7-33-authentic-emotion/
the Writing Excuses folks talk about how to make the emotion in your writing authentic. And along the way, Mary proposes an exercise. Here's her description at the end of the podcast:

"Take a scene. Describe a setting. Then go back and describe that same setting with three different emotional states. One, your character is happy. One, they are angry. One, they are frightened. You may not use any emotion words, like anger, happy, or frightened."

See, real simple. Start by writing a description of a setting or scene. Just go ahead and write it out.

Then go back, and rewrite/revise that description three different times. First, assume the point of view character is happy. Now describe that same setting/scene, but through your word choice, the parts of the scene that the character pays attention to, and whatever else, make your reader realize that the character is happy.

Oh. Please don't use emotion words. Don't tell us that the character is happy. Just make us feel it.

Second, suppose the character is angry. Redo the description again, but this time let us know that the reader is angry. Use the sentence structure, the way they walk into the scene, whatever to let us feel that anger.

Third, and last, what if the character was frightened? Go over that description again, but make us feel the fear that the character is experiencing.

Simple, right?

Good! Write!