Writing Your First Novel – the Essentials

by W.H. Matlack, author of the novels: Noir Town, Waiting to Run, and The Memory Walker

Writer’s Drive

To successfully tackle something as daunting as a 60,000-word novel, you’ve really got to see yourself as a writer. You’ve got to have what I call, writer’s drive. It comes from the essential core of every writer – being a story teller. No more. No less. And believe me, that is enough because writing is just another way of telling a story.

Writers are just story tellers in love with the written word. Your desire to write probably comes from stories you’ve been telling your friends and families for years. Without even realizing it, you’ve been honing your writing craft. Perhaps your friends and family have been telling you to “write that stuff down.” They are absolutely right, but don’t just launch into a novel. You need to prep first.

Time

So you’ve finally retired, or you’ve gotten the kids off to school, and there are no sports practices scheduled for a few hours. Or something else has occurred to give you time to yourself. Time that gives you a couple of hours to launch into that novel you’ve wanted to write since college. Or maybe you’re still in college or in high school or even in junior high. More than likely you’ve had to make the time, which is fine. What counts is that no matter what you had to do, you’re looking at time to write, and that’s the first essential. You just need to manage your time into planned steps.

Short Stories

Every time you engage your family or friends with one of your tales, you’ve actually been honing your short story writing ability. Keeping people engaged during a party or family gathering from beginning to end really tasks a story teller. You’ve learned how to edit out what doesn’t work and how to embellish what does. You’re ready for the next step – writing down those short stories.

Now the cool thing about this is that when you write out one of your favorite stories, all you have to concentrate on is the writing process. You’ve already come up with the characters, the scene, the dialogue, the timing, everything involved in the story. You are free to concentrate on develop your writing style. You can explore different styles – humor, drama, and tragedy - virtually anything you want. You just need to find your writer self, and you won’t have to worry about plot development or character building. You’ve already done all that.

The trick is to keep them short as you experiment. 1500 to 2000 words is a good length. Avoid the temptation to go on and on. You want short, punchy, entertaining stories. The most important guideline – have a strong beginning, middle, and end, and make the end as dramatic as possible. And please, don’t forget to break things up into paragraphs. There’s nothing more annoying to a reader than looking at a solid block of type. Confused about how to use paragraphs? Pick up one of your favorite novels and analyze how the author uses paragraphs.

In fact, reading good novels is an important part of learning to write. Learn to read from a writer’s perspective. How does a successful author handle character development, scene transition, descriptions, etc? 

Getting Feedback

Like any exercise, writing takes practice and…the scariest of all…feedback from your readers. Whenever you give someone a story to read and make comments, you are suddenly out there. What you need – what we all need, actually – is a safe place to get feedback. What I recommend is signing up for a writing class through your local community college or adult school. You can expect the class to discuss a different aspect of writing for a while, and then everyone will get an assignment or two.

It’s a great way to exercise your imagination. Sometimes you’ll be given ten minutes to write a short piece on some theme or even a photograph. At the end of the period, everyone will read what they’ve written. That’s the safe part, because everyone will read and discuss, and these sessions are primarily positive. Plus it’s loads of fun seeing how many different approaches the other class members have with the same subject.

Branch out

When you feel it’s time to leave the safety of the class and get some reactions from readers instead of just writers, take your stories to an open mike at a local coffee shop. Nearly every neighborhood coffee shop worth its “beans” hosts an open mike – usually one night a month, and they welcome “spoken word” performers. That’s you!

If you have kept your stories to about 1500 words, you’ll be able to read them within the ten minutes allotted per performer. The best thing is you’ll get immediate feedback. Laughter, tears - the whole spectrum of emotions you have layered into your work. You’ll get both positive and negative feedback, but don’t be afraid of getting both. In each case, ask yourself what you could have done differently to enhance the laughter or suppress the negative. A lot of times someone will say that they didn’t understand something. That’s the best criticism of all, because it gives you a chance to clarify, and clarification is the best kind of editing. That and word reduction.

Editing

Editing is an ongoing process. It comes first when you finish a piece and then read it over carefully. You’re sure to find awkward phrasings, or words repeated too often. When we’re writing we are seldom aware of how many times we’ve used a word. When my first novel went through initial editing, I was shocked at how often I used the word, “little.” Every paragraph seemed to have that word in it.

The other goal of editing is word reduction. When we write we tend to throw in unnecessary words or phrases. All these extra words load down our narrative and make our stories seem labored. Writing is mostly like sculpting. You might need to take a “little” off there and add a “little” here. Editing makes for good prose, and every author out there, no matter how successful, gets edited. Look at the acknowledgement page in a book by your favorite writer. The chances are pretty good that you’ll see an editor thanked.

Fiction

Once you feel confident in your writing style and editing abilities, it’s time to turn to fiction. Now you’ll need to use your imagination as well as your writing style. You’ll need to construct “workable” worlds with everything in them, people, objects, mood, and everything else needed to further your plot. I think of myself as a stage manager for a play. All the props need to be established, and it has to be done without wearing down the reader with excessive descriptions. It’s a different kind of challenge, but a liberating one. Essentially you create everything your characters need. If they need to quickly exit a room, and there’s no door. You just create one!

Once it was pointed out to me that my character was in a room that exploded, but I needed him out of the hospital in two days. My friend said that with the kind of explosion I described, my character most likely would have died. No problem. I just wrote in – or created – a concrete pillar and heavy oak desk and put them between the character and the explosion. Problem solved.

Tackling the novel

Once you feel confident with your short fiction, it’s time to tackle the novel. What additional tools do you need? First of all, you need to be organized. Going back and forth in a small 60,000-word novel is no easy task. I don’t have any secrets for how to do it other than to make notes as you go. I always have a list of characters on my desk with their names and relationships with each other, and other things I need to keep in mind. A timeline is also a good idea just to keep track of where you are in the story development.

Key to the whole process is to understand your characters. A strong novel takes time developing its characters. Characters are really what a novel is all about. Think of them as little sculptures. Are they fully developed? Does their motivation further the plot? Motivation is most important in character development, but make sure they have enough character flaws. That’s what makes them interesting.

Outlining?

There seems to be two basic kinds of novelists. First are the outliners. They carefully outline each scene and plotline before beginning the process of writing prose. The second are what I call “rabbit holers.” I got that from a quote by Lewis Carroll who said, “I sent Alice down a rabbit hole with no idea of what she would find down there.” I don’t know for sure if Carroll actually said that, but it describes the class of novelists who bravely go where no one else has ventured. The plot, characters and every other aspect just comes to them as they write.

It’s absolutely thrilling when it happens. I call it a “writer’s high,” and it’s similar to a runner’s high. It’s what makes writing an art form. Of course there are writers who do a little of both.

Stuck?

Whenever I’m stuck in a story, I’ll put aside some time and work up an outline, which I never seem to use as I get back to it. It’s a good safety net, however. I have one friend who solves the “stuck” problem by writing the ending and then just gluing the two together. Another writer I know has her characters write letters to her. Both techniques work for them.

A word on poetry

Freeform poetry is by far the most accessible form of writing because there are no rules. There are plenty of other poetry styles that have lots of rules, some of them very complex. However, most beginning writers start with freeform. I recommend that as a good exercise for beginning writers. It’s a great form to build compelling imagery and mood, and it’s just a lot of fun to do. Carry a small journal with you, and write short poems about what you see on a day-to-day basis.

In fact, you may decide that poetry is what you want to pursue instead of writing long novels. Go ahead. You’ll be joining a great literary tradition, but just keep one thing in mind when it comes to marketing your work. There are far more people writing poetry than reading it, and the outlets for getting published are very few. It’s kind of like Jazz in the world of music – very few outlets, but very creative and well respected.

Enjoy it

Remember, even if you are never able to sell a novel or secure an agent, you are as much as writer as Hemmingway or any other. It’s the process that makes it an art form. Once a story is finished, it becomes a product, and you have to switch into a sales and promotion mode. No matter. It’s your story. You’ve created it for yourself, and if you’re happy with it, that’s really all that’s necessary.

Good writing to you!