How to Write Your Novel

We’ve seen the writing prompts showing you how to get started. We’ve seen the “how-to”s explaining the format necessary to submit a publishable manuscript. Rarer is the actually useful stuff. I’ve noticed that people don’t want to be writers because they feel like spending the rest of their natural lives typing—they do it because they have an idea, a story, and they want to share that with people. Enter the largest hurdle that I personally have: actually getting my ideas on paper. I have rewritten the first chapter of one story at least twelve times, without ever progressing beyond chapter three. I have given up hope 134 pages into another story and looked away in disgust every time I glimpse the horrible, disgraceful file. I have discarded thousands upon thousands of words worth of planning and research. I have given up one of my favorite characters as a human sacrifice to the bloodthirsty god of dissatisfaction.

So, upon realizing the unnecessary pain that I’ve put myself through, I’ve created a guide for other fledgling would-be writers who are caught in the trap of “I cannot finish for my work sucketh”.

1. Number your pages

Get a notebook; spiral-bound or composition doesn’t matter, nor do color, shape or size. It must be something that you can smuggle around in your purse, backpack, or that other thing that you take with you to most of the places you go, and you must accept the fact that you will be hauling it around regardless of convenient size.

I recommend not using a computer to write your first draft. There’s something much more organic about a good ol’ pen and paper, but it’s also a lot lighter and has a reduced chance of running out of batteries in the middle of a flash of inspiration.

Numbering the pages ahead of time has a psychological effect on you. You now feel the need to fill those numbered pages. As they are already set aside for your novel, it is almost sinful to tear out a page for petty uses like taking notes for office meetings.

I recommend only number the front of each page. The back can be used for planning and leisurely purposes, like scrawling down a fun word or a phone number as becomes necessary.

Keep the notebook with you always, write in it as often as you can, preferably on a daily basis. Word count doesn’t matter.

2. Write in pen

The first advantage that pens have over pencils is that the lead doesn’t break when you keep it in your pocket (or in the spiral binding of the notebook) and doesn’t run out of lead (in the case that you are thinking of a mechanical pencil, you modernite!).

The second is that pen (for the most part) is not erased. Meaning that once you write something, you can’t agonize over it forever just because it doesn’t look right. If you have an idea for a correction right away, you can scribble out the offending words and replace it with something better. This does, however, give you a limited amount of space in which to write it. This ultimately forces you to advance, whether you’re happy with what you’ve just written or not. And, statistically speaking, you won’t be happy with it. It’s your first draft—it’s supposed to suck.

3. Obey the nice lady with the anvil

The scantily-clad woman who is beating your head in with a mallet? She’s your muse. And she’s trying to tell you something. Sometimes you’ll get inspired—a beautiful scene, a perfect way of wording something, a witty piece of dialogue. Write it down (or if it comes in the form of an image, draw it; or if it’s sound record it, etc.). I don’t care if you’re in the shower, on the bus, on a date, in bed, or wherever. Find a way to excuse yourself and record your flash of inspiration.

Muses are fickle. If she is disobeyed, you will either:
Forget whatever piece of genius you were given, or
Have it stuck in your head, leaving you mentally crippled until you get around to recording whatever it is you need.

If what you’ve just been inspired to write appears in a later scene (they often do) and you’ve ended up writing it on a napkin, flyer, or some other scrap of paper, then don’t add it into your notebook just yet, but tape it to the inside cover. When the time is right to add in the piece in question, you will be forced to rewrite it. This not only allows you to properly incorporate it into the natural flow of the story, but also lets you reexamine it to see if it’s really as good as your muse led you to believe.

4. Go on a date with your imaginary friend

You, as the author, need to know everything about your characters. I’m not kidding—everything. What’s his favorite color? Is he allergic to anything? What are his hopes, his dreams, his fears? Did she have any childhood friends? What was her least favorite nickname? Who was her childhood crush? Is she a big-wedding kind of girl or a little-wedding kind of girl? Does he have a mole on his neck? Does she have a scar from falling out of that tree when she was twelve?

It often helps to have detailed bio sheets for all of your characters. If you can draw, it’s nice to have a physical representation of what you think they’d look like, including what they’d typically be seen wearing. The bio sheet should be insanely detailed, and it should make logical sense (a PETA member whose favorite food is cow brains would not work, for example).

You have to be able to view your characters as real people. If you can’t, then there’s something wrong, because if they can’t convince you, there’s no chance that they can convince a reader who didn’t go through the effort of giving birth to all of them. These are your friends, your family, and should be treated accordingly.

Yes, you love them dearly. Yes, you know everything about them, down to that itty bitty pimple just behind his ear and her family history of left-handedness. But keep in mind that most of these facts are for your eyes only. Unless it’s pertinent to the plot in some way, most of these extraneous details should be avoided. So why did you go through the trouble of thinking up favorite foods and colors? See point C.

5. Learn to enjoy salt

I recommend typing up your manuscript. First of all, handwriting can get pretty messy if you’re in the heat of passionate inspiration, and second, it forces you to look over your work a second time. Did his name change halfway through? Did she undergo a drastic change in personality? Is that piece of dialogue just plain garbage?

Remember the above piece of advice: your first draft is supposed to suck. That’s its job. So when you type it up, you aren’t supposed to type it up word for word—for heaven’s sake, if you see a mistake, CHANGE IT! Fix those unrealistic lines of dialogue, add those inspired scenes, mend your grammar, fix your broken continuity.

On a later revision, don’t be afraid to ruthlessly cut things. If they’re not important, then they don’t need to be there. You’ve seen the big picture, now take in the seams.

Take everything you read with a grain of salt. It’s good to question yourself—look at your work through the eyes of someone who hasn’t fallen in love with your characters and knows every miniscule detail of your country.

Go over it a couple more times. Because you missed something. Yes, you did. Check again.

6. Learn to love your cruelest friends and hate the nice ones

For the sake of love (it says somewhere that you’re supposed to love those that smite you, doesn’t it?) give people the typed version. Don’t make them suffer through your chicken scratches and miniscule notes-to-self.

You are trying to write a novel. Not something that goes online, not something that goes in your journal. A novel. As in, it’ll be published (you hope) and seen by hundreds, if not thousands, if not millions of people. So you want it to be good, right? So you’d better swallow your pride, suck it up, and learn to take a beating for your baby.

If your friend says that he/she loves it, ignore him/her. Move on to a far meaner person. Perhaps that one girl you threw up on at last year’s party? Yeah, her. Hearing people tell you how talented you are does wonders for your ego, but it does nothing to improve your writing style. What you need to hear is criticism, unadulterated by the petty lies of a ‘good friend’. What you need is tough love, someone to honestly say that this line sounded unnatural, they couldn’t even make sense of that passage, and that over there? What were you thinking?

Do not under any circumstances defend your work.

Once a sufficiently sadistic person has bludgeoned you within an inch of your life, it is time to examine each and every one of his/her remarks. What was enjoyed? Keep it, study it, and see how that can be applied in other areas. What was confusing? Clarify it. What was unnatural? Rework it. What was unnecessary? Cut it. What was boring? Liven it up, preferably with action or comedy. What was wrong? Fix it. You get the idea.

Once it has been fixed, hand it off to another sadist and go through the process again.

This is not a cure-all by any means. It is a list of useful hints, grouped into bite-sized portions that I've noticed are helping me actually get through a work, instead of stopping to rewrite the same scene ten times over. I hope it helps you, and that at the very least you find it entertaining.

Your humble servant,

Masako Moonshade