Ten shun!
Here’s a few thoughts you want to bear in mind when starting out on your novel.
How do you select your story?
You need to have a sense of where you are going before you start. It can take me up to six months after I have finished one book to work out what the next one is going to be. I’m waiting for a novel to ‘take possession’ of me. And get a lot of false starts.
I wanted to do one about a writer who faked his death to improve his sales - but I couldn’t think of a third act.
I wanted to write a novel about a happy and unhappy married couple who lived next door to each other. But couldn’t think where it went.
I thought of one about a rich London family who becomes poor – this has a good, if well used, high concept, three acts, and a lot of characters. But it feels too ‘high concept’ for me. I write smaller stories as a rule.
I want to write one about a vicar in the community – but my agent didn’t think they could sell it.
It’s trial and error. But ask - is there a beginning a middle and and end in sight? Is there sufficient potential for character development? Is there any idea behind it that you are truly taken by? Is it an idea that you might actually sell to a publisher?
The simplest idea is to place yourself in alliance with the main character and look at the action through their eyes, either in third or first person. Don’t boggle your reader with complications at first.
`Some teachers say, ‘don't begin at the beginning’. I don’t really agree - the beginning seems a very good place to start - but there’s no firm rule.
Often, rather then where you start or what you write it is voice that carries your book. A sense of confidence and depth to the sentences. This is very hard to express, but it has something to do with ‘getting under’ the sentences to something deeper underneath.
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