Dos and don’ts for first time novelists
'Twenty years ago I thought “I wonder if I could write a novel?”
This article is for those who’ve recently had the same thought. It’s not about marketing ~ you might not have got to that stage yet. It’s just some random pieces of advice for those who are putting finger to laptop key to blank word document, for the first time, taken from my own experience and observation of others’. I hope it helps!
DO read a lot, and when you do so, take notice of why certain passages appeal to you, or bore you. Be aware of the structure of the story as a whole, and what it is that makes you keep turning the pages…
…but DON’T try to write like your favourite authors. The people you love reading are successful because they have their own ‘voice’, and you need to find yours, too. In the future, when your novel is published, some readers might say that your style reminds them of so-and-so’s, but this should be a happy accident, not something you seek to achieve.
DO plan your novel first. It needn’t be 50 pages of in depth character studies and scene setting; I often start a novel with just a few pages of notes about the first few chapters, but you need to know where those chapters are going. I don’t make character studies; to me, writing down something like “Charlie: 37, has commitment issues, likes Chinese food, smokes” would be a bit like novel writing by numbers – and if I needed to make a list of his characteristics to remind me, it would mean he hadn’t ‘come alive’ yet. However, for the story arc you DO need to have a basic plan, because'…......
To continue reading this enlightening article please click on this link: Terry Tyler’s Literary Blog