How I Learned to Write a Novel

I learned to write a novel by doing everything the wrong way. Perhaps I can save you some time in your own quest to the finish line; perhaps not. Like many things in life this may be something everyone has to suss out for themselves. But here, for what it's worth, is what I learned.

1. Have a strong main character that audiences will identify with, and like. My first novel started as a kind of adventure story about a hard-boiled young woman who kicked a lot of ass. She had her soft side too, but mainly she was rude and headstrong. Some people may have related to her, I don't know. I think she was a lot of things I just wanted to get off my chest. But ultimately, she wasn't likable and it wasn't entertaining. My next version of her went the other way and she cried way too much. I'm not sure why. But as my novel--and my writing--matured, so did my character. I like the final version, but it took a long time to get to her. She's strong yet vulnerable, alone in the world and a little defiant about it, but a genuinely nice person. I guess the lesson I learned here was, start with someone you're going to want to finish with. A novel is a little like a marriage: it's a long haul kind of thing. If you start to despise the character, it falls apart.

2. Always remember the audience. Self-indulgent stuff is fun to write but who is going to want to read it, other than you? I'm not saying you shouldn't write what you want to write, but a novel should be a careful balance between details rooted in personal experience and universal themes. It can be therapeutic to write a revenge story about a relationship that didn't end the way you wanted. It might even be a great story. Just remember that if you want to sell it, others need to relate to it too. Of course, just writing that story might save you a lot of money at the therapist's, and just getting it out of your head might be well worth the time and effort. Stick it in the drawer, and move on with your life. But I'm writing these tips with the assumption that you want to be published, so, onward.

3. Try to work from an outline. Oh, how I rebelled against the outline. I don't want constraints on my art! What a downer, man! What I learned is an outline is the key to completion. It doesn't have to be a formal document filled with roman numerals. It can be a single paragraph, or even something that's just in your head. But knowing where you're going helps ensure you might actually get there. My novel meandered all over the place, into dead ends and impossible situations, until I learned to steer it. I do think this is something that you have to learn for yourself. I've heard of people who use an Excel spreadsheet to plan their novel: whatever works! And what works for me, may not work for you, but here's what I use now: a series of paragraphs, one for each major part of the novel, which I then flesh out as I go. I don't include every scene, because that really would hamper my creativity. But I do include scenes that occur to me as I go along, even if it's something short like, "have her lose her job here." The result is a story that knows where it's going, and I have one completed novel to show for it.

4. Keep it simple. This is just something that works for me. I'm not talking about the storyline or your characters here. What I mean by simple is don't clutter your writing with unnecessary elements. I needed my main character to find her mother, from whom she'd been estranged for many years. My first attempt was to have her get a job at an inn across the way and watch for when her mother left the mansion where she was staying, because my character didn't get along with her mother's new lover, whom she'd known when she was a child. I discovered that while this might work very nicely in a character piece, it didn't work in my action-paced novel. It slowed it down. I had to add characters I wasn't invested in, like her new boss. It was too complicated for what I wanted to accomplish, and wasn't meant to be such a major part of the novel. This is part of what I mean by steering. I decided ultimately to have her and her mother both be on the same private cruise, her mother by invitation, my character through a bit of subterfuge: she knew Mom was on the yacht.

5. Be careful about casting your side characters. I started with a whole bunch of bad guys, who were a bit cartoony mixed with the Sopranos. In other words, a little laughable. And my hero was a bit callow. What was weird was, I started writing and one of the "bad" guys ultimately became my real hero: he was much more interesting! When he decided he wanted to kiss the heroine I realized I needed to rewrite the story and dump everyone except him and her. I did have an interim version in which Mr. Callow turned out to be the bad guy but I scrapped that too. My final version of the story has the heroine, her parents, the hero, and everyone on the private yacht. That's pretty much it apart from one or two incidental others.

I need to stop here but I plan to revisit this topic. Until later, ciao.