How to Write a Novel…in My Opinion
I’ve recently finished a first draft of the fifth (yes FIFTH!) novel in the Annals of Nether-Staining series (update on that soon). If you’ve never heard of it (and with a saturated market place you wouldn’t be alone) then in essence it is comedy sci-fi which strays into murder, horror, romance (of a sort), religion and more. It’s certainly genre-busting.
The first thing I would say is that to write then you should probably read, because if you don’t have a grasp on how a story hangs together then you may not be able to write one.
Anyway, I was thinking about how I write in a way that works for me. There are a lot of authors out there who would tell you that there should probably be a certain process you should follow (I dare say creative writing courses do just this also) but deep down I think the first major rule is that if I’m not enjoying writing it then you probably won’t enjoy reading it. So if the story starts to feel like a slog to write then I change direction a bit.
When I wrote “Baabaric“, my first novel, I effectively made it up as I went along and let the story flow. This worked well for me but before I began “Stoned” (which is a more complex tale with several moving parts) I decided to make a detailed plan. I started to write to this plan but I really hated it because I had lost a part of the writing that I enjoyed, namely puzzle solving. I like it when characters get into a dead end because I have to think to create a way out of it for them and this keeps things energised and entertaining for me, and so hopefully for the reader too. Without the freedom to change direction and be creative throughout, I don’t care for writing fiction. Ever since this, with “Pickled” and “Blasphemy” and the upcoming fifth volume, I stick to what I enjoy creatively.
This is very different for the non-fiction books I have published. For “Theatre of Life“, the memoirs of my grandfather, it was a labour of love to publish his words posthumously and was all about trying to fact-check and collate different parts of his life (and different media sources – even including an old cassette tape!) into a coherent tale of social history, WWII and pantomime. Very much about process but extremely worthwhile.
For “Puppy Dog Tale“, a memoir about raising a guide dog, I worked out the main chapters I felt needed to be in there and the items I wanted to write about and went from there. It was far more about process but the creative element still existed in terms of how I wrote about the experience.
After that, the editing comes along, which I always think is the most important (and far more challenging) part because, if you care about your audience and have some pride in what you publish, you can always spot things you can do differently or better and, of course, spelling mistakes (this is especially true when you capitalise or even invent certain words).
Ultimately though, without a passion of some kind for the content, there is no point writing at all. I wish all authors thought like that rather than sometimes it feeling, to the reader, like it is just a process.
