Tuesday 5 January 2016

A Guide On How To Write A Novel

By Rebecca Bennett


The desire to write a novel burns in many hearts. There are many stories waiting to be told through novels but the authors wonder where to start. It is only by understanding how to write a novel that you will make your dream come true. The rewards of completing a book are overwhelming. By following simple steps, you will have your best seller in months without much effort.

Begin by writing a summary of your story. This summary should be a single sentence that is less than fifteen words. This sentence will be used to sell your book once it is completed. It will be valuable as you seek to convince editors, committees and book stores to stock your title. It must not contain the names of characters. An example is what would be found on reviews by major news outlets.

Follow up the sentence by expanding it into a summary paragraph. This paragraph is a brief of the main occurrences and characters in your story. It captures the triumphs and disasters in three acts where the first introduces the main disaster, the second captures two other disasters while the third is the triumphant act and the ending. This should not exceed five sentences.

Characters are the drivers of your story. The summary sentence and paragraph provide an idea of what is expected of you. It is time to grow them by assigning names and attributes. This should only be done for the main characters. Minor characters will emerge during the actual drafting. Use a single sentence to describe each character. Each of them should have a motivation, goal, personal conflict and epiphany.

Do not hesitate to revise your one sentence or one paragraph summary from time to time. This is an indication that the details of your novel are teaching you things that were not clear at the beginning. Take the steps as a learning point. Do not target to write a perfect summary at the beginning or capture the characters fully when you start. Some things will become clearer as the story develops.

Developing characters and the story line takes hundreds of hours and even weeks. Once the process of completed, it is time to summarize your story into a single page. The process of analyzing and developing characters is painstaking yet interesting. Everything needs to be condensed into a single page as you begin the process of drafting.

With clear details of scenes and characters, time has come for you to bind them into a single story. You will realize that you are engaging in a lot of filling. Characters and scenes that did not exist will have to be created. Avoid diluting or substantially changing your story line based on discoveries made when developing secondary characters. This stage is demanding and requires total concentration and a substantial amount of time.

Novels are written by dedicated and focused authors. Set a goal including a completion date. Split the goal into workable tasks each with a strict deadline. Read widely on occurrences and scenes to get a captivating imagination. Even fiction writers must give a realistic imagination to make their writing enjoyable. You should have your first draft in six months to one year depending on the time you dedicate.




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