Writing a novel can be intimidating
Feb. 19th, 2012 03:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
blatherskiteOver on the F&SF magazine forum, a reader asked how to get over the intimidation factor involved in writing a novel. Here's what I wrote:
Think of it this way: even the 1000-year history of a civilization can be written as a series of 1000-word installments. A novel's no different, except that you probably shouldn't cover the whole history. Just pick the juicy bits. *G*
Put a little less metaphorically, the point is that writing 150K words in a single sitting is far too massive an undertaking to contemplate, and if you think of a novel that way, you'll never muster the courage to start. But if you're serious about writing, it shouldn't be hard to write down 1000 words (on average over the course of the project) in a day's work. Indeed, if you've got a story worth telling, you'll gradually become so interested in what happens next that you'll want to write a second 1000 words, either today or tomorrow. If not, it's likely nobody else is going to want to read your story any more than you want to write it.
That approach will give you a 150k-word novel in less than half of a year. Add another half year to rewrite all those 150K words from scratch so that they're maybe approximately sort of kinda hopefully as good as you thought they were, and that's still less than a year for that novel. As you get better at this (and it takes hours of practice), things will go faster and there will be less "from scratch" involved in the revision.
Feel a bit less overwhelmed now?
Slow but steady got me through three novels, so that's my bit of anecdata to prove that this isn't just theory. It worked fine for me, with the biggest problem being that I rarely have enough free time to just sit and write for several hours at a stretch when I get enthusiastic. I'm hoping to get started soon on my 4th novel if I can get my work life under control again. Big "if", sadly. There's often precious little "free" in the word freelancer.
How to assemble those batches of 1000 words into a novel that works is trickier, but not much. The key is to get past the intimidation factor and just do it. There are two extreme approaches, which entertained me all out of proportion to the actual humor value, when I listened to Tim Powers and Steven Brust describe how they wrote. (This was many years ago -- more than 20? -- at Worldcon.) Note: These are not literal quotes or even good paraphrases; like I said, it's been 20 years, and I'm undoubtedly exaggerating each author's views. But the basic principles illustrated by the two different perspectives is robust and insightful.
Powers exemplified the anal-retentive extreme (no offense to Powers), claiming to basically complete all his research and nail down the vast majority of his outline right down to the last comma position before he ever began writing; from that point on, it was just a question of following the outline and filling in the words. In contrast, Brust basically said "I want Vlad to get in trouble with X, and I'll start him at Y and let him tell me how to get to Z while surviving X."
That's all it takes: start with a good understanding of the really good story you want to tell, select decent characters to help you tell it, then set them on your preplanned course and see what happens. As you get to understand them, you'll find they occasionally want to depart from the rigid course you've set in ways that are completely natural to the characters even if they aren't what you originally intended. Give them some freedom to find their own way between the waypoints -- and to skip those points entirely if something more interesting comes up.
What if they really don't want to go somewhere that you really want them to go? Make them go anyway; you're the author, after all. But don't expect them to like it, and do expect to chronicle just how much they hate you for making them do what they don't want to do. Therein lies some good dramatic potential. Each of us faces many situations where we have no choice about what to do, even if we'd rather do something else or go somewhere else, and if you can remember what that feels like well enough to show the reader how your characters are feeling that same frustration, fear, resentment, etc., you've got some good fiction happening.
Depending on your style and your personal preferences or aptitudes, you'll err more towards the Powers extreme or more towards the Brust extreme. I try to steer a middle course by first figuring out an overall story arc that works as a good story. I then jot down an outline that lists the key events that *must* happen in a given order for that story to work, and for each event, I list the key points I want to make and how I'd ideally like to make them. Then I stop and think about the characters until I believe that I understand who they are and what motivates them at a given point in the plot (both may/should change over time!), and when I point them at those waymarkers, that helps me pay attention to where they might prefer to go. Both of us (me and a given character) often think we know where we're going and why, and suddenly discovering that we don't understand nearly as well as we thought can provide some interesting unplanned events.
For me, this provides a perfect balance of control over the overall story structure (which gives me my writing plan) combined with the freedom to revise that structure as I progressively understand the story and characters better. Does it work? All three novels are available free for the reading in the fiction part of my site. Read them and tell me whether it worked! (The link to my fiction site is over at the top right side of this blog page.)
Think of it this way: even the 1000-year history of a civilization can be written as a series of 1000-word installments. A novel's no different, except that you probably shouldn't cover the whole history. Just pick the juicy bits. *G*
Put a little less metaphorically, the point is that writing 150K words in a single sitting is far too massive an undertaking to contemplate, and if you think of a novel that way, you'll never muster the courage to start. But if you're serious about writing, it shouldn't be hard to write down 1000 words (on average over the course of the project) in a day's work. Indeed, if you've got a story worth telling, you'll gradually become so interested in what happens next that you'll want to write a second 1000 words, either today or tomorrow. If not, it's likely nobody else is going to want to read your story any more than you want to write it.
That approach will give you a 150k-word novel in less than half of a year. Add another half year to rewrite all those 150K words from scratch so that they're maybe approximately sort of kinda hopefully as good as you thought they were, and that's still less than a year for that novel. As you get better at this (and it takes hours of practice), things will go faster and there will be less "from scratch" involved in the revision.
Feel a bit less overwhelmed now?
Slow but steady got me through three novels, so that's my bit of anecdata to prove that this isn't just theory. It worked fine for me, with the biggest problem being that I rarely have enough free time to just sit and write for several hours at a stretch when I get enthusiastic. I'm hoping to get started soon on my 4th novel if I can get my work life under control again. Big "if", sadly. There's often precious little "free" in the word freelancer.
How to assemble those batches of 1000 words into a novel that works is trickier, but not much. The key is to get past the intimidation factor and just do it. There are two extreme approaches, which entertained me all out of proportion to the actual humor value, when I listened to Tim Powers and Steven Brust describe how they wrote. (This was many years ago -- more than 20? -- at Worldcon.) Note: These are not literal quotes or even good paraphrases; like I said, it's been 20 years, and I'm undoubtedly exaggerating each author's views. But the basic principles illustrated by the two different perspectives is robust and insightful.
Powers exemplified the anal-retentive extreme (no offense to Powers), claiming to basically complete all his research and nail down the vast majority of his outline right down to the last comma position before he ever began writing; from that point on, it was just a question of following the outline and filling in the words. In contrast, Brust basically said "I want Vlad to get in trouble with X, and I'll start him at Y and let him tell me how to get to Z while surviving X."
That's all it takes: start with a good understanding of the really good story you want to tell, select decent characters to help you tell it, then set them on your preplanned course and see what happens. As you get to understand them, you'll find they occasionally want to depart from the rigid course you've set in ways that are completely natural to the characters even if they aren't what you originally intended. Give them some freedom to find their own way between the waypoints -- and to skip those points entirely if something more interesting comes up.
What if they really don't want to go somewhere that you really want them to go? Make them go anyway; you're the author, after all. But don't expect them to like it, and do expect to chronicle just how much they hate you for making them do what they don't want to do. Therein lies some good dramatic potential. Each of us faces many situations where we have no choice about what to do, even if we'd rather do something else or go somewhere else, and if you can remember what that feels like well enough to show the reader how your characters are feeling that same frustration, fear, resentment, etc., you've got some good fiction happening.
Depending on your style and your personal preferences or aptitudes, you'll err more towards the Powers extreme or more towards the Brust extreme. I try to steer a middle course by first figuring out an overall story arc that works as a good story. I then jot down an outline that lists the key events that *must* happen in a given order for that story to work, and for each event, I list the key points I want to make and how I'd ideally like to make them. Then I stop and think about the characters until I believe that I understand who they are and what motivates them at a given point in the plot (both may/should change over time!), and when I point them at those waymarkers, that helps me pay attention to where they might prefer to go. Both of us (me and a given character) often think we know where we're going and why, and suddenly discovering that we don't understand nearly as well as we thought can provide some interesting unplanned events.
For me, this provides a perfect balance of control over the overall story structure (which gives me my writing plan) combined with the freedom to revise that structure as I progressively understand the story and characters better. Does it work? All three novels are available free for the reading in the fiction part of my site. Read them and tell me whether it worked! (The link to my fiction site is over at the top right side of this blog page.)