How to Write a Novel
Every serious writer has to learn one truism: you are a storyteller, tell it like the story asks you to be written (or like you think it is) and not how your editor, the market, the publicists will want it to be.
I'm in the process of publishing my 4th novel, an Urban SF YA story. What it dawned on me is that the novel had its reality not as ink on paper, but as a series of experiences in the mind of the reader created by those abstract marks on paper. That's how you engage your readers: The writer conjures a vision, and the way to write the story is by asking yourself how can you give substance to the sensations that vision creates in your mind.
So the book had to be written inside-out. I had to imagine what I wanted to happen inside the reader’s mind, then make the marks on paper that would—to the best of my ability—cause the reader’s internal vision to correspond to my own. If your words don't move you, there's no chance you can move your readers.
I'm in the process of publishing my 4th novel, an Urban SF YA story. What it dawned on me is that the novel had its reality not as ink on paper, but as a series of experiences in the mind of the reader created by those abstract marks on paper. That's how you engage your readers: The writer conjures a vision, and the way to write the story is by asking yourself how can you give substance to the sensations that vision creates in your mind.
So the book had to be written inside-out. I had to imagine what I wanted to happen inside the reader’s mind, then make the marks on paper that would—to the best of my ability—cause the reader’s internal vision to correspond to my own. If your words don't move you, there's no chance you can move your readers.
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