So You Want to Write a Novel?

Thoughts on Getting Started
by Rick Bylina

Short of a long class, spending lots of money, and time (months, not the three day or week long classes that will blow a gasket in your cranium with too much material too fast), my ultimate suggestion for someone starting with a blank slate and trying to organize and frame a story is as follows:

1. Bring a large notepad and buy a cup of coffee in your favorite bookstore and read THE MARSHALL PLAN FOR NOVEL WRITING by Evan Marshall. Okay, everyone stop snickering. I mean it! Right now! No snickering! Yeah, it's how to do genre fiction, but if your goal is to get a grasp over the entirety of writing a novel in a nutshell, this is a good place to start with many practical pieces of information and many of the "writing rules."

2. Buy, read, and digest STORY by Robert McGee. It is the kick you in the groin version of "this is what you need to know and damn it you better listen to me." Because, well, he's right about most of it.

3. Buy and mark-up SCENE AND STRUCTURE by Jack Bickham. This gives you some of the nuts and bolts necessary to nail down how scenes and chapters are pulled together at a more detailed level.

4. Watch very carefully the following movies:

• The Fugitive
• Casablanca
• Adaptation
• Memento
• Double Indemnity
• The Sixth Sense

5. Write, write, write. Read, read, read.

6. Many very good books can help you edit your story, but I would recommend using MANUSCRIPT MAKEOVER by Elizabeth Lyon to fix what you broke along the way and tighten what you've learned in steps 1, 2, and 3.

7. Now that you have all the rules together -- Break them! Bend them! Stomp on them! -- like some Friday night wrestler pouncing on the dancing baby from Ally McBeal.

8. Supplement your learning with a good workshop...one that focuses on your material (not one that makes you write a lot of useless writing exercises about the last time you wet your pants while in the first grade). I recommend Writers Retreat Workshop in Erlanger, Kentucky. Ten days of hands-on with incredible exposure during the workshop to the staff, agents, and editors, and ongoing support after leaving the workshop.

9. Remember:

• Character is plot.
• All the main characters need a motivation and goals for their actions; otherwise, you get meaningless action and stereotypes.
• Less is more.
• "To be" verbs are not evil, but need to be sprinkled lightly.
• If you are bored with what you are writing, so are your readers.
• Adjectives and adverbs are not the enemy; they just aren't your friends.
• Whenever possible, drop "said" and use some action to indicate who the speaker is.
• Eat more chocolate.
• Remember the four firsts: sentence, paragraph, page, and chapter. They must grab the reader to keep them interested in reading on.
• There are an infinite number of stories to be written.
• Literary fiction is a title conferred on your work, not something you write. Write what you want, but "understand" the marketing and story-telling reality behind the genres.

10. Don't be afraid to write crap (see BIRD BY BIRD by Anne Lamott or ON WRITING by Stephen King). All writer's do it, but then they move on. And that is the entire key to writing, because in the world of writing, there is only one rule.

Writers write! Everything else is a guideline.