How Not to Write a Novel.

I said I would never write a blog post about how to write a novel, but the problem is, I’m both a reader and a novelist. These two go hand in hand. To be a good writer, one has to be well-read. You just can’t read a couple of books and think you know how to write a novel. Writing a novel is far more complicated than just putting down words. Writing involves a lot of thinking, planning, rewriting, and, most of all, editing until you’re sick of your story.
Like building a house, you need a good foundation. What I mean is you need to start with a great storyline. What is your story going to be about? Which of your characters is going to be the main character? Whose point of view is going to carry the story forward? These are some of the questions you as the author will need to answer before putting the first word down.

Remember, the most important thing is to hook your readers and carry them off into your world of make-believe. Once your reader opens your book, you have complete control of their thoughts. You want them under your spell. Anything that snaps the reader out of the illusion you have created means you’ve lost control of their mind.

While in Pickering, North Yorkshire, I picked up a new book from the Pickering Book Tree bookshop. What drew me to the paperback was first the title and then the cover.

Okay, so selecting a novel purely because the name “Moat” appears in your family tree is a bit crazy, but I did read the blurb. An abandoned place, haunted by secrets, I found intriguing. I knew nothing about the author, but after a quick Google search, I found out that the author was born in Kent, and this was her debut novel published by Chronos Publishing in October 2023. Yes, I guess you have spotted it. I bought the book in September, and it wasn’t released until October.

Moat Hill Hall is told from the first-person point of view, but it jumps around quite a bit from one character to another. At times, this became confusing, along with the jump in the timeline. The author tried to clarify this by using chapters to show a shift in time, but then a few paragraphs down she jumped back into the present. This meant I lost the plot, and I couldn’t get things clear in my head. (Yes, that might just be me.) I did understand the author was trying to give the reader the backstory of the house, but it added to the confusion.

I was a hundred pages into the novel and still not settling into the flow of the narration, and this was worrying me. After another forty-odd pages, the wordiness of sentences, misspellings, and paragraph constructions started to jar me out of the book. As for the mystery and secrets, I began losing interest and starting to wonder if the book had been self-published.

There isn’t anything wrong with being self-published as long as the book has been professionally edited. There are three stages to editing.

Structural editing: Here the focus is on the overall plot of the story. Does it work? Is there enough tension building up to the centre of the book, which drives the reader to keep turning the pages? Check the timeline, develop characters, expand or tighten scenes, clarify details, and maybe delete unnecessary wordiness, scenes, or dialogue.Copy edit: Here the focus is on line-by-line editing. After a structural editing, you need to check the changes you have made. Once again, you are checking for unnecessary wordiness, spelling mistakes and typos. Proofreading: Here the focus is a read-through of the complete novel checking that nothing is missing, no mistakes, no typos and everything flows. Pay careful attention to the opening paragraph. Will it hook the reader? Check the ending. Does it tie up all the loose endings?A final read-through by someone else may give you some unexpected pointers before you submit it to an agent or publisher if you aren’t going down the self-publishing route.

A quick Google of the publisher of Moat Hill Hall told me all I needed to know. Their Submission Guideline stated: “Please note – whilst we will accept submissions, we will not publish any manuscript that has not been professionally edited, proofread and formatted. Whilst we do not expect all submissions to have been through this process, there will be costs associated with this, if we agree to publish the work, that the author will be liable for.”

Chronos Publishing is merely a printer. They print your book as it is. You need to ensure that your manuscript has been fully professionally edited because they won’t be spending time or money on this. The expense firmly rests on the shoulders of the author.

Another confusion in Moat Hill Hall was the fact that the author used the same name for two characters: Ralph Evans, the owner of Moat Hill Hall, whose deceased wife was Alice, while the main character Rosie Rudley’s friend was also named Alice. Whenever Rosie mentioned seeing Alice or Alice appeared in the book i.e. “Is that you, Alice?” Rose called. I thought the ghost of the deceased wife had made an appearance. Moreover, the eyebrows in the novel have minds of their own and perform astonishing tricks, as depicted in the picture below.

I’ve underlined the part. Just so you’re clear April Ralph’s wife is speaking here.

All I can say is that I’m disappointed by the book. I continued reading it in the hope that I could leave a review on Amazon and Goodreads, but it was so poorly written that I couldn’t. There’s nothing positive I can say about it, apart from the fact that it has a lovely cover. The mystery and secrets the blurb talks about seemed to have been left in the author’s head. The plot quickly fell apart and lost its intrigue. I think the author is a lover of classic Victorian romantic novels. Her writing style was too much “tell” and not enough “show”. Even the Victorian writers had more tension in their romantic scenes, whereas Moat Hill Hall’s felt flat.

If you want to know how NOT to write a novel then this is the book to read.

I guess, if I’ve created a positive outcome for the author from my review it will be a rush to buy her book for a learning curve on how to write better.

Keep on writing, reading and dreaming.