Archive - August 2015

The # 11-Key Step: This extra step is like the 19th hole for golfers. You’re back in the bar at the club house going over your score and declaring if you had made a couple of putts on the front nine, or if that wedge on the par- 5 hadn’t  checked up below the hole on 17…. why instead of 87, you could have posted a 72 or 73. That’s golf. That’s writing a novel. So, with your first draft finished, push back from the computer and pour yourself a drink and think: “Now who’s going to play my protagonist in the movie they’ll make of my book?” Let your mind wander….. will it be??????

The # 10 Key Step: Imposing a structure on your book. When I was writing my first published novel, The Piercing, I imposed a structure on the plot that complemented the religious overtones of the book. As a specific time frame for my story I chose the 40 days of Lent. I then divided the book into 40 chapters, one for each day. This structure enabled me to pace the story while always having an overview of where the plot was going. You will be surprised that even an artificial structure, like a scaffolding to a building, will help you write your book. You can discard the building blocks later, if you want, but the device will help you write your novel. For example, if you want to write a novel that takes place all within twenty-four hours, you have that security of a structure to pace the story but . . .

The # 9 Key Step: The chapters of your book need to gain momentum and each chapter needs to be “larger” than the previous one. Think of your chapters as rooms in a building in which each space that one enters is larger than the previous one, and you, as the author, are leading a tour. The readers must sense that as they read they are making progress: learning, and understanding more and more about the characters and the situation. Remember also that characters do not operate in a vacuum. Their actions usually involve other people, and these interactions are what make up scenes. A single scene or a telling description can be a building block for constructing a unified story line. That means that you plot and your characters have to grow and evolve. This happens in two ways: their actions and their outlook on life. Readers develop an . . .

The # 8 Key Step: Commit yourself to a point of view early in your planning and stay with it. This enables your-and your readers-to get a footing in your story. “Point of view” is a term that refers to the relationship between the storyteller, the story and the reader. A story can be told from three different points of view–first person, second person or third person. Our natural inclination is to have a narrator who tells his or her own story in the first person. Think of J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye. A first person storyteller can also tell someone else’s story, as did Nick Caraway in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. Other writers use the third-person point of view. There are various kinds of third person narrators. Two examples are. An omniscient storyteller who goes everywhere, knows everything, reveals what is in the minds of . . .

The #7 Key Step: Find a batch of 4 x 6 index cards and write each one of your characters at the top of the card. Next, think about the role each character plays in your story, and what kind of person each is: age, education, place of birth, appearance, mannerisms, personality. Some characters will be major ones during the action of the story; others will play only bit parts. Regardless, the details of their personalities and lives are critical to adding interest to your story. You must remember, however, that every character must have a reason for being. If they do not, they will slow the book down and worst of all, bore the reader. Using this same index-card technique, Alfred Hitchcock would write down information about each scene of his film, one scene to a card. By the time he was ready to shoot, he had a completely . . .

The # 6 Key Step: Playing God. If you want to write a novel, you must act like God. You begin to play God by creating a main character. You need a strong protagonist, someone who draws the reader into the story. This is the person with whom your reader will identify. You want your reader to care about your protagonists. You may have a main character who is a villain, but he or she is not the protagonist of your story. The protagonist is the hero or heroine carries the narrative to the climax of the novel. You have to decide. To help you decide, always ask yourself these critical questions: Which option would be most interesting to the reader? Will the reader care? These questions are the real litmus test of character development and plotting. To be successful, you need to make hard choices. You need to be . . .

The #5 Key Step: Here are six things you have to do to finish your novel within 100 days. • Write at the same time every day. • Never wait until you “feel like writing.” • Turn off all distractions, like email or T.V.. • Set a goal to write a minimum number of words each day. • Don’t try to write too much at one time. • Try this trick of Ernest Hemingway’s. End each session in mid-sentence or mid-paragraph so that you’ll have an easier time starting up the next day. Here’s another 10 steps exercise, this one from Brian Clark, of CopyBlogger.com 1. Write. 2. Write move. 3. Write even more. 4. Write even more than that. 5. Write when you don’t want to. 6. Write when you do. 7. Write when you have something to say. 8. Write when you don’t. 9. Write every day. 10. . . .

The #4 Key Step: You need to set a schedule of how much time you have in each day to write and how many words you want to write. You don’t have to write a lot. Ernest Hemingway wrote his first book, The Sun Also Rises in seven weeks—that’s approximately 1,500 words a day, but for more of his life he averaged 50 words a day when, as he would say, “the going was good.” Set a goal for yourself. For example. There are approximately 250 words on a printed page. So your goal is to write 1,000 words. Or four pages. Some days you’ll only manage to produce one page, other days you may write 15 pages. If you maintain this routine, you will have a 240-page book at the end of 60 days. That’s your first draft. Now, you start to rewrite. And that is what writing a . . .

The # 3 Key Step: Choose your characters first as they are harder to imagine than the plot, and they are the keystone to your book. As you write, your plot may or may not change, but your characters will develop and have a life of their own. As the characters develop, they’ll take on distinct personalities, and, as with good friends, you will know in certain situations what they will or will not do. Listen to your characters. Listen to their demand, who if they were to come to live, would have a different fate than what you are planning. They will tell their own story, and if the story they tell surprises you, will it will surprise the reader, too.  As Somerset Maugham says, “you can never know too much about your characters.” In writing my last novel Long Ago and Far Away, I started the book thinking . . .

The # 2 Key Step I’m a great believer in having the last line or last paragraph of my novels in mind before I start. I don’t know exactly how I’ll get there, but I have a destination. Joe Heller who wrote, as you know, Catch 22, said “I can’t start writing until I have a closing line.” The short story writer Katherine Anne Porter put it this way: “If I didn’t know the ending of a story, I wouldn’t begin. I always write my last line, my last paragraph, my last page first.” In fact, she wrote the last page of her only novel, Ship of Fools 20 years before she finished the novel. Interestingly, in the summer of 1962 she gave a talk at a writer’s conference at Georgetown University. Our Peace Corps Training for Ethiopia was also being held at Georgetown at the same time so I . . .