You Too Can Write A Novel

Six tips to get you started, keep you going and finish a novel.

Whats the most common statement I get when people learn Ive had six novels published? They say theyd always enjoyed writing, but could never write an entire novel.

People who love to write often conclude they dont have what it takes to write a seventy-thousand word (or more) novel. My response led me to create a workshop called You Too Can Write a Novel with another Arizona writer, Toby Heathcotte.

Our six tips work whether you intend to write a thriller, a mystery, or a romance novel; genre is not important.

The basic component of a novel is not a sentence or paragraph. The basic component is a scene. In high school, teachers often gave assignments to write a five-hundred word theme. We got through it right?

If you can write a five hundred-word theme, you can write a five hundred word scene. If you can write three or four scenes, you can write a chapter. If you can write a chapter, you can write twenty or more. If you can write twenty chapters, you can write a seventy thousand word novel!

What else have I learned? I learned six tips that work for me and many others Ive met, W-R-I-T-E-S. If you keep these tips posted somewhere near your computer, I think theyll help you get started and keep going until you finish a novel.

W- Write your novel with an end in mind, but give your characters room to grow.
R- Rake your characters over the coals of extreme personal and professional conflict.
I- Ignore advice to write what you know. Write the type of novel you love to read.
T- Take your reader to exotic locations or scary places youd never go yourself.
E- Edit later, outline later, take writing classes later. Just get started.
S- Start with a bang. Grab the reader in the beginning and dont let go. The most important line of your novel is the first. Make it memorable. Librarian Nancy Pearl once said when you read a good first line, its like falling in love.

These six steps will help you get started. But often a novel will sag a third of the way through. The writer might get stuck wondering what direction the story should go. Some writers give up and never finish. How do you keep going? There are two things to remember that will keep you going, every scene needs conflict and emotion.

Conflict and emotion drive plot. Emotion will occur if your characters have to deal with conflict. If your scene lacks conflict it will lack sufficient emotion to keep your reader reading. If your scene lacks conflict, throw it out and write a new scene.

If your manuscript sags at any point in your novel, analyze the source of the conflict then add to your main characters personal and professional conflict. Conflict and emotion, they will keep you going until the end.

You can do it. Get started. Until you write the following two words, youll never write a novel. Chapter One.

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