WRITING 101
© 1999 by Matthew Strebe
Matt is one of our most successful eWorld Writers alumni. We're proud of him.
How To Write a Novel
HOW TO WRITE A NOVEL
Many people have asked me how to finish a large work of fiction. I suppose they ask
because I've actually finished one, but it's only just one and I have not yet tried
to publish it, so I don't count myself among experts on the topic. I have however
written several voluminous technical books (700+ pages each) and that experience
has helped me to realize that haphazardly writing from the beginning to the end is
as likely to produce a masterpiece as picking up a hammer and nails is to produce
a beautiful home. As with most endeavors, a good measure of planning, along with
a willingness to deviate from the plan when developments overwhelm it, seem to be
the keys to success.
This strategy will help you if you've experienced "writer's block" (a loss
of inspiration that's actually caused by the subconscious feeling that the work isn't
turning out the way you wanted it to), if you feel like you're lost in details, if
your characters are clichés, if your writing is too hurried and not detailed
enough; if you have problems with wandering perspective or shifts in tense; or experiencing
other common writing ailments.
This strategy assumes that you either know, or can look, up the meanings of the technical
terms it uses, and it does not approach syntactical elements like spelling, grammar,
punctuation, and usage. Those are all well covered in other references, and are prerequisites
to writing for anyone seriously considering the trade. This strategy also does not
attempt to explain fiction concepts like plot, characterization, setting, or pacing.
These too are also well covered by other works.
A) The Strategy
This strategy consists of a number of "steps" to take to plan a piece of
lengthy fiction. Writers often rush to the keyboard to bang out a few chapters whenever
they feel inspired by a new idea. This is good--don't let discipline squelch your
enthusiasm. Adopt this strategy when the typing stops and reality intrudes. This
method can be just as appropriately applied to works already in progress as it can
to new works. In fact, you may find that deconstructing your work to fit it into
this structure will help you with some niggling details that you've been worried
about. By all means, let the muses grip you for as long as they will--you can always
come back to the plan when your mind slows down.
Feel free to adapt this strategy any way you'd like. It's not a firm set of rigid
methods, it's merely a collection of things that have worked for me. It got me over
the hump, and hopefully it'll help you, too.
1) Define
Explain the plot of the story in one sentence, referencing only the main characters
and expressing it from the perspective of the protagonist. Refine your plot until
you can do this.
2) Summarize
Write a brief summary of the story -- a "back page" if you will. This summary
should include all the subplots and main characters -- include the ending! This information
and the first few chapters will serve as your query letter later on.
3) Outline
Write a one-sentence description of each scene. Scenes are settings that occur in
a single location and include a fixed number of characters. The length of a scene
is widely variable -- from as little as a few paragraphs to perhaps the entire book.
You will subdivide the book into chapters once it's finished. A chapter may contain
multiple scenes or a scene may compose multiple chapters.
4) Characterize
Define each character at the beginning of the outline--or at least at the beginning
of a scene before they appear. Treat each character as if the story was about them,
no matter how minor their role in the story is.
5) Motivate
Include the character's motivations. This will prevent you from letting melodramatic
prop characters slip into your writing.
6) Relate
Describe the relationship to other characters and how this character feels about
the other characters.
7) Detail
Flesh out the outline using a compact style like third person past tense omniscient -- just
describe what has to happen in each scene -- no dialog. Ask yourself why the scene exists
and what it accomplishes.
8) Criticize
Pass the outline around among people you trust to tell you the truth. Ask them if
they like the plot, if they think they would purchase a book about this topic. You
aren't looking for detailed comments -- just a general feel for whether or not you should
bother proceeding with the project. This is important -- it will keep you from wasting
a lot of time.
9) Sensationalize
For each scene, make a scene description to include each of the five senses and the
mood of each character. Describe what can be seen, smelled, heard, felt, and (perhaps)
tasted. Doing this before you write will encourage you to include this information
when you write.
10) Decide
Choose mechanical styles like narration and perspective. Ask yourself why you're
choosing this style of narration and what it will bring to the story. Ask yourself
what your tense and perspective choices add to the story. Few books have been successful
with more than one narrator.
Avoid the temptation to think that you know better than publishers, editor, and most
importantly reader how you want to package your story. Issues of narration, voice,
and perspective are relatively minor. Most authors who "fall in love" with
a particular style or who adamantly defend their unusual choices are usually just
defending the only way they know how to do things. Experiment with all these styles
before you decide you know better than people who have.
B) Narration
1) The Author
This is generally reserved for opinion pieces. It is out of fashion for fiction as
it tends to be preachy and heavy handed. Beware: Writer's often accidentally slip
into author narration when their own opinion slips out in an other-wise effaced narration.
Consider the following example:
"Bob brushed his sweater off before he entered the bar. He knew Janice would not
be able to resist him. Like most men, he cared little for her feelings."
It's subtle, but the statement "like most men" is an intrusive opinion
about a specific group by the author. With an effaced narrator, this is erroneous.
If, however, the narrator were a divorced woman it would be entirely appropriate.
2) A non-character narrator
This is someone common among "homey" works and eclectic fiction. A non-character
narrator is an involved narrator with opinions who never shows up in the story. Sometimes
the narrator is introduced as a character in a "frame" of first and last
chapters that go around the real story to provide details the author otherwise would
not be able to express using the chosen perspective. This is often the case with
historical pieces--James Cameron's Titanic or "A Prayer for Owen Meany"
are examples of framing using a non-character narrator. (Actually, in both these
cases the non-character narrator is the "older" version of the young person
who the story is about. It may seem strange, but "Old Rose" is a separate
character from "Young Rose".
3) A character
The story is presented from the point of view of one of the characters. Usually,
it's an involved character other than the protagonist, but it can be the protagonist
if you want an especially narcissistic or moody feel to the piece.
4) Effaced narrator
An effaced narrator is essentially a non-narrator. No opinions or observations are
expressed about events as they unfold--scenes are described but who is describing
them is never known. This is an especially popular form because it's easy and it
makes shifting perspective easier.
C) Tense:
Tense describes when the story is taking place relative to now and determines which
verb forms you'll use throughout the book.
1) Past tense (Worked)
The story happened earlier than the time it's being told. 90% of all published fiction
is past tense. Past tense fits the traditional campfire story tradition that the
fiction trade evolved from.
2) Present (Works)
Present tense has recently become popular for action/thriller stories because of
the immediacy that it endows. Before the advent of motion pictures, present tense
was not a serious consideration and all stories were written in past tense with the
exception of a few ultraliterary experiments. Because present tense corresponds well
to screenplays, it's showing up with increasing regularity. Some readers are strongly
biased against present tense, however, so be advised that you may lose some market
if you choose to use it.
3) Future (Work)
Future tense is experimental and no novel to my knowledge has ever been published
in the future tense. It is useful for short passages where a character describes
what will or might happen in the future, however.
D) Perspective
Determine whether the book will be written from the perspective of just one character
or will shift between multiple characters. Indicate the proper perspective at the
beginning of each scene.
1) First Person (I)
This is the natural perspective of story telling ( "I did not have sex with
that woman!"), but it's a rather limiting form. When you use first person, you
generally must have a character narrator and you cannot show what happens in the
minds of other characters.
2) Second Person (You)
Second person ("You can click the right mouse button to open the options panel")
is rare, and generally not appropriate for fiction, with the minor exception of experimental
"choose your own ending" works that occasionally crop up in the juvenile
fiction markets.
3) Third person. (They)
Third person is the most common perspective for fiction because it allows the author
to show the activities of all of the characters at once ("Bill went to the store
while Fred walked along the tracks.") This flexibility makes it easy to show
anything you want.
E) Write
Try to write an entire scene in each session. For each scene, perform the following:
1) Refresh
Reread your scene information to refresh your mind with the sensory information and
the scene summary.
2) Sympathize
Put yourself in the character of the narrator as you write the scene, whoever that
narrator is.
3) Show
Describe only scenery -- never describe the motivations of characters, their thoughts,
or anything else that can't be sensed (seen, smelled, felt, heard, etc.). This will
keep you from telling -- you'll have to show what's going on through character interaction
and dialog. Many published writers do express the thoughts of characters as if the
thoughts were unquoted dialog, but you should avoid this in your writing because
it's easy to fall into the telling trap when you express a character's thoughts.
Construct activities that make their motivations clear without interior monologue
whenever you can.
If you think you have to do a "data dump" (pumping lots of information
into a reader in a short time) ask yourself how your character would have found out
this information and present that scene. It may be from watching the news, talking
with another character, or investigating a strange occurrence.
4) Clarify
Learn to write efficiently. Say what you mean, get to the point, and don't pad your
story to make it longer than it naturally is. Consider the following:
"Janice had thought about going down to the store for a while but wound up waffling
and staying home anyway because she couldn't muster the energy."
Compared to:
"Lethargy prevented Janice from going to the store."å
They both say the same thing, but the second sentence has more meaning density. This
makes your story more active, energetic, and rich. People will have a hard time putting
down clearly written text.
This doesn't mean you should any content from your story to make it smaller, just
that you should eliminate useless wordiness.
5) Polish
Write as well as you possibly can, with the idea that every sentence you write is
in its final form. You should have already finished your plotting and characterization
before this point, so there's no point in editing ad infinitum. You may write inside
your outline or in another document as you please, but if you write inside you're
outline you'll have to pull the meta-information out before you submit it to anyone.
6) Edit
Pass your finished first draft around to people you trust to tell you the truth.
Have them read with a red felt marker and write any questions or comments they have
on the draft.
7) Revise
Complete your first draft by creating a final draft based on the comments of your
peers.
F) Steps to building an outline of the opening scene:
1) Plot Line
2) Scene
3) Purpose
4) Set
a) Visual
b) Audible
c) Olifactoral
d) Tactile
e) Mood
4) Characters
5) Synopsis
6) Narrative
© 1999 by Matthew Strebe
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Narration does seem to be a bit confusing for a lot of people and
it goes hand in hand with perspective (sometimes called Point Of View) so perhaps
a bit more on that is in order.
The narrator is the person telling the story.
Think about that concept for a moment. Now, technically the person telling the story
is the author, and for millennia the human story telling experience included only
the author / poet as the possible narrator. Even as late as the great Greek epics
the author was quite obviously the narrator. Imagine if you will the blind Greek
poet Homer sitting on a rock in the middle of a makeshift amphitheater telling stories
about the Trojan war and you'll get the idea of the author narrator. Author narrators
can say whatever they want about the characters and events, including expressing
opinions, and they presumably know everything that happened--in other words, an author
narrator is "omniscient" or all knowing. Author narration is now completely
out of fashion because it was so horribly overused in the 19th century for morality
and opinion novels that it's now considered preachy and moralistic.
During the renaissance the idea of writing about a different narrative style came
into vogue--a character in the story that was actually telling the story. Character
narration is one step removed from reality--the author is writing about someone who
is telling a story. These works are still done from the third person perspective--e.g.
The narrator is a he or she in the story. The problem with character narration is
that there's only one narrator per story, so if you choose a character narrator,
you can't see everything that's going on with the other characters.
During the industrial revolution, authors began putting themselves directly into
character and writing narratives from the "I" perspective of a character--In
other words, it's as if the author were narrating the story directly except that
the author is one of the characters. This narrative style includes any piece written
from the first person perspective. This narrative style suffers from the same problem
as the above third person character narration style--Only one character's thoughts
can be represented. On the flip side, you can get deeply into one character's head
in this style. The character can think freely without tagging the thoughts because
the readers know who's telling the story so they know who's thinking. Use this style
when you need a moody edge to a complex character piece.
Finally the modern "effaced omniscient narrator" is basically a return
to the author narrator style, but without the opinions or thoughts. The effaced,
or faceless, narrator is a non-entity--neither the character nor the author--just
some invisible being that explains in dry terms what's going on in the story. The
idea behind the effaced narrator is that there is no specific narrator--not the author,
and not a character. The words just come from themselves, you might say. Obviously
there's no room for opinion or commentary on the activities of the characters when
you use effaced omniscient narration. This is the style most preferred in the majority
of fiction works today because it has no "baggage"--you can do whatever
you want in terms of expressing the thoughts of multiple characters, so it's easy
to work within. Technically, whenever you express an opinion, you have to tag that
opinion to one of the other characters or you slip into the less preferred author
narration style. Effaced omniscient narration is actually a product of cinema--the
camera is an effaced omniscient narrator. When you want to write in this style, imagine
that you are watching a movie of your work and only write what you can sense. You
can include the thoughts of other characters if you'd like, but treat thoughts as
quote-less dialog, as in: Matt is a pretentious bastard, she thought.
Problems with perspective and narration come from the fact that writers often have
no clear idea who is telling the story as they write. Before you write a scene, decide
who's telling the story. It'll make your writing a lot more crisp and readable and
will cause you to automatically avoid making all sorts of perspective and narration
mistakes that while invisible to the writer wind up confusing the readers--because
they still automatically expect a single story teller.
You can switch narrators if you'd like during the course of a story, but you'd better
do it only on chapter boundaries to prevent confusing the readers. And make it quite
clear who the narrator is early on in the chapter if you do switch narrators.
© 1999 by Matthew Strebe
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This treatise grew out of a request and reply within the group.
* * *
Dear Matt & Members,
I'm currently reading a hardcover British novel called Ariadne's Children,
which has a really peculiar use of tense. It's about three generations of a family
who do archaeology on the island of Crete, from before WWI up to the present day.
The chapters that are set in the past use "ordinary" past and present tenses.
However, the set-in-the-present chapters are done entirely in a detached, present
(and even future!) tense and style.
Example: It is January 1990, the day when policemen
are blown over in the Strand and lifeboat crews are lost at sea, as Dan will learn
in the evening from the television news.
Later on that same page: He's bound to catch
a cold. Dan catches cold easily. He is of an age to fret about such things.
Okay, folks, what you you make of this? I'm sure Matt and some others of you know
the name of this style, but I'm stumped. -PC
* * *
Hi Paul,
From your example, It looks like future-perfect tense, which is a very
strange tense indeed. The normal choice would be to use future-progressive
tense. Progressive tenses almost look passive, because they use
state-of-being verbs to indicate that activity is continuing to occur
(<--see, just did it) in the time frame. This is different than the perfect
tenses, which indicate that the activity has been completed (perfected).
Example:
Past-perfect tense: John went to the store
Past-progressive tense: John was going to the store
Present-perfect tense: John goes to the store
Present-progressive tense: John is going to the store
Future-perfect tense: John will go to the store
Future-progressive tense: John will be going to the store
See the difference?
What I'm seeing in the example you show is future-perfect: In other words,
the activity happens in the future but is somehow already complete. This
explains the "sense of detachment" you picked up on--because the verb is
not
shown in it's progressive tense, you don't feel as if it's going on, you
feel as if it's already complete and you're reading about it after the fact.
The inherent paradox in casting the future as already complete is why you
don't see the future perfect tense often. Case in point:
<<lifeboat crews are lost at sea, as Dan will learn in the evening>>
The activity here, Dan's learning, is presented as if it's a foregone
conclusion, as if he's destined to learn it and his destiny is immuteable.
Normally, the sentance would be cast in the future progressive, as in:
<<lifeboat crews are lost at sea, as Dan will be learning in the evening.>>
This provides more of a "glimpse into the future" as the future happens,
rather than a statement of destiny. It looks like the story might have been
written in the future-progressive tense and then modified to future-perfect
by someone (author or editor) who had a knee-jerk reaction to state-of-being
verbs and eliminated them all.
Anyway, it certainly is unusual.
Matt