Writing A Novel
23/Jan/2008 Filed in: News
To write a novel you must make a
transition from reader to writer, which is an emotional
thing.
Make it easy on yourself. Keep having fun with your writing as you develop it.
My writing-craft books and novels are full of notes and not just underlines.
To test yourself, take paragraphs you like from what you read and “correct” them or transpose them.
The Writer’s Interface is based on the method of transposition. This means that you take from the over thirty lists on a subject, such as the ways of creating suspense, and you rewrite this list as another list in terms of your own story.
The same is done with scenes from novels. Take a scene you like from reading, then simply rewrite it using different character names, themes, or actions. Or simply add to the action a new twist. What if you made the action go another way?
Make it easy on yourself. Keep having fun with your writing as you develop it.
My writing-craft books and novels are full of notes and not just underlines.
To test yourself, take paragraphs you like from what you read and “correct” them or transpose them.
The Writer’s Interface is based on the method of transposition. This means that you take from the over thirty lists on a subject, such as the ways of creating suspense, and you rewrite this list as another list in terms of your own story.
The same is done with scenes from novels. Take a scene you like from reading, then simply rewrite it using different character names, themes, or actions. Or simply add to the action a new twist. What if you made the action go another way?
Imagine that if in Cold
Mountain, instead of Inman getting shot and killed by
accident, he killed his teenage opponent and then had to face Ada
with the fact that he had just killed all these people who were out
to get him.
This would not be so difficult to do. To write different endings. To add a different chapter somewhere?
The point is that you don’t start from scratch. You test yourself by writing.
You don’t have to try and be original from the first go. You do have to write to learn how to write and to see if you can write.
Test yourself. Take a short novel you really like and rewrite paragraphs here and there. You will learn a lot.
Say, now you have a good story and theme. You want to write about a major life situation or problem. All novels are problems being solved.
What is a problem that most concerns you in life? Here is a partial list. You can add to it or make your own list.
◦ Your main character has teenage sex and is made fun of and has to stand up for herself, not only with her mother, but at high school.
◦ A high school athlete wants to become a great athlete but to do so he or she needs a great coach who believes in him or her absolutely. However, the alcoholic father, himself formerly a talented athlete who failed his potential is always putting down the son or daughter. Of course you want a reconciliation in the end. And you have a conflict between father and coach, and between father and son or daughter.
◦ So for your story or novel take a real life ambition or theme and make it into a story with fundamentals.
◆ -a main character who has an ambition to succeed
◆ -a major theme related to real life
◆ -an opposition character
◆ -a difficult main situation to overcome
◆ -conflicts between main characters to solve
◆ -losses that can become gains if learned from
◆ -a helping character or two who comes forward at the right time
◆ -a betrayal or two to make the main character realize the real in life
◆ -a major crisis before victory
◆ -a major victory in the main character realizing his or her ambition
◆ -rewards all around at the end
◆ -punishments for the negative characters, or their redemption
You don’t have to do original plots or stories. You do have to write. Thus you need to plot something that is important to read about. If it is important to read about it is important to write about.
Thus you take the above list and transpose it. You make a list of story characters and situations that fit the above list. Then you write a paragraph description to each.
To practice story-plotting, when you are with friends talking and you here the development of a love story, flesh it out right there. You say, “what if you did this and this happened, and then what would you do?”
So you do a lot of what if? speculating. All story writing is stimulated by what if? situations.
When you have plotted out a story you think you might like to write, you can check this story-line with friends.
When you feel you have an exciting story-line you can outline it fully, with paragraphs for each development.
What remains to do now is complexification, the introduction of many, many story dramatizing techniques. How do you build in suspense and foreshadowing, for instance?
Now you need fifty to a hundred scene descriptions. In the old days you would put this on paper cards. Now you can do it with your computer. The Writer’s Interface also does this with you.
You develop your scene descriptions based on the type of scene it is. Is it an action scene. The main character enters the room and something dramatic happens. Is it reflection? The main character and a support character talk at the kitchen table. More action. There is a rap at the back door. And so on.
Three to five scenes make a chapter. Flesh it out a bit.
The Writer’s Interface lists hundreds of ways of describing character and scene. You have lists to work from. You are not in the dark about what writing craft to use. You also will think of things to do yourself. It is a natural imaginative process.
You may not want to wait until you have your whole novel planned out. You have an outline surely for many of the scenes. Pick your favorite and write up the scene in full dramatic detail. Now you are having fun.
With the full story-outline you can write scenes here and there as you feel for it. You can write the ending first. Then the first scene. Then a conflict scene and another and another. Then, for good technique, also write reflection scenes after the action scenes. You also need character and place description scenes to write and add color to your story-novel.
With the Web now we can all do easy research for our story-novels or plays.
◦ you build your outline with key story ideas as scenes in some developmental order
◦ you build a list of characters you like to write about
◦ you build a list of places you would like the story-actions to take place in
◦ you build a list of main actions you want to have happen
Can you see now how with these lists and a time line of scenes in story-progression you can research for all of these on the Web. Just put in key words in the search engine.
For scenes in a cafe you research cafes and copy the descriptions in an electronic notebook to refer back to when you are writing that scene. It’s so easy! But watch that you don’t get over-fascinated by research and never get back to story-writing.
One of the essences of story is that you transport readers into another life from their own. To do this you need a story that involves the same life problems as the reader has, and you need to give the reader a lot of interesting new information that they learn through reading the story, like what it’s like to be crew in a submarine at sea.
Notice that before you have even written a lot of story text you are building an interesting story by doing your story-outline and your research to go with each of the scenes you have described as being part of your story.
If there is a foot soldier or a policeman in your story you have researched these roles, their attitudes, their uniforms, their guns and ranks, a lot of interesting stuff.
Thus when you write a scene you read over the research you have done and then write your scene, stimulated by all the information.
What The Writer’s Interface with the WriteItNow software provides you is the detailed way to keep yourself organized in writing a novel. The Writer’s Interface also provides you with generic story-structure for a novel or screenplay, and hundreds of key story-tools for dramatizing your story and characters.
You must have organizing software because of the complexity and amount of information there is to dramatically organize in writing your novel.
The haphazard way of writing a novel is to write a spontaneous first draft and then to improve on it by writing many more drafts. Where does this lead but to a lot of work and often not a well developed and suspenseful story. The best writers are organizers and planners. They keep working journals for notes, ideas, additions. Now this can all be done with software.
With organizing software and a writer’s interface you can do your organizing of your material quite easily and still keep track of it all, which is the goal of organizing software.
So, enjoy the planning also of your story. The Writer’s Interface can serve to inspire you also because of giving the writer so many writing techniques. Thus as a writer you are learning many new writing things with using The Writer’s Interface in interactive learning.
There is no money back guarantee. This is a software interface. You use it to learn it. This involves your commitment to writing. It’s not surface or superficial like so many writing programs. You are guided in the work of actually producing a full length story which may turn out to be a good novel.
We don’t call you great or fantastic. We put you to work.
The Writer’s Interface is a full length digital book of over 92,000 words which you use interactively as your guide along with the developed WriteItNow software, a full organizing and writing software.
Try the free demos, make your commitment, buy the full programs, and get to work for the next year or so.
The Writer’s Interface is the first comprehensive interface for using software to write a novel. It is written by a professional writer who has sold over 350,000 of his many books over the years. It represents his professional experience in writing and in teaching creativity as an expert psychologist.
The Writer’s Interface is the first full interface between the end user and his or her software ever published. Get it now. It will save you years of study and put you to work developing your story-craft to a high level.
This would not be so difficult to do. To write different endings. To add a different chapter somewhere?
The point is that you don’t start from scratch. You test yourself by writing.
You don’t have to try and be original from the first go. You do have to write to learn how to write and to see if you can write.
Test yourself. Take a short novel you really like and rewrite paragraphs here and there. You will learn a lot.
Say, now you have a good story and theme. You want to write about a major life situation or problem. All novels are problems being solved.
What is a problem that most concerns you in life? Here is a partial list. You can add to it or make your own list.
◦ Your main character has teenage sex and is made fun of and has to stand up for herself, not only with her mother, but at high school.
◦ A high school athlete wants to become a great athlete but to do so he or she needs a great coach who believes in him or her absolutely. However, the alcoholic father, himself formerly a talented athlete who failed his potential is always putting down the son or daughter. Of course you want a reconciliation in the end. And you have a conflict between father and coach, and between father and son or daughter.
◦ So for your story or novel take a real life ambition or theme and make it into a story with fundamentals.
NOVEL FUNDAMENTALS
◆ -a main character who has an ambition to succeed
◆ -a major theme related to real life
◆ -an opposition character
◆ -a difficult main situation to overcome
◆ -conflicts between main characters to solve
◆ -losses that can become gains if learned from
◆ -a helping character or two who comes forward at the right time
◆ -a betrayal or two to make the main character realize the real in life
◆ -a major crisis before victory
◆ -a major victory in the main character realizing his or her ambition
◆ -rewards all around at the end
◆ -punishments for the negative characters, or their redemption
You don’t have to do original plots or stories. You do have to write. Thus you need to plot something that is important to read about. If it is important to read about it is important to write about.
Thus you take the above list and transpose it. You make a list of story characters and situations that fit the above list. Then you write a paragraph description to each.
To practice story-plotting, when you are with friends talking and you here the development of a love story, flesh it out right there. You say, “what if you did this and this happened, and then what would you do?”
So you do a lot of what if? speculating. All story writing is stimulated by what if? situations.
When you have plotted out a story you think you might like to write, you can check this story-line with friends.
When you feel you have an exciting story-line you can outline it fully, with paragraphs for each development.
What remains to do now is complexification, the introduction of many, many story dramatizing techniques. How do you build in suspense and foreshadowing, for instance?
Now you need fifty to a hundred scene descriptions. In the old days you would put this on paper cards. Now you can do it with your computer. The Writer’s Interface also does this with you.
You develop your scene descriptions based on the type of scene it is. Is it an action scene. The main character enters the room and something dramatic happens. Is it reflection? The main character and a support character talk at the kitchen table. More action. There is a rap at the back door. And so on.
Three to five scenes make a chapter. Flesh it out a bit.
The Writer’s Interface lists hundreds of ways of describing character and scene. You have lists to work from. You are not in the dark about what writing craft to use. You also will think of things to do yourself. It is a natural imaginative process.
You may not want to wait until you have your whole novel planned out. You have an outline surely for many of the scenes. Pick your favorite and write up the scene in full dramatic detail. Now you are having fun.
With the full story-outline you can write scenes here and there as you feel for it. You can write the ending first. Then the first scene. Then a conflict scene and another and another. Then, for good technique, also write reflection scenes after the action scenes. You also need character and place description scenes to write and add color to your story-novel.
With the Web now we can all do easy research for our story-novels or plays.
BUILDING YOUR STORY
◦ you build your outline with key story ideas as scenes in some developmental order
◦ you build a list of characters you like to write about
◦ you build a list of places you would like the story-actions to take place in
◦ you build a list of main actions you want to have happen
Can you see now how with these lists and a time line of scenes in story-progression you can research for all of these on the Web. Just put in key words in the search engine.
For scenes in a cafe you research cafes and copy the descriptions in an electronic notebook to refer back to when you are writing that scene. It’s so easy! But watch that you don’t get over-fascinated by research and never get back to story-writing.
One of the essences of story is that you transport readers into another life from their own. To do this you need a story that involves the same life problems as the reader has, and you need to give the reader a lot of interesting new information that they learn through reading the story, like what it’s like to be crew in a submarine at sea.
Notice that before you have even written a lot of story text you are building an interesting story by doing your story-outline and your research to go with each of the scenes you have described as being part of your story.
If there is a foot soldier or a policeman in your story you have researched these roles, their attitudes, their uniforms, their guns and ranks, a lot of interesting stuff.
Thus when you write a scene you read over the research you have done and then write your scene, stimulated by all the information.
What The Writer’s Interface with the WriteItNow software provides you is the detailed way to keep yourself organized in writing a novel. The Writer’s Interface also provides you with generic story-structure for a novel or screenplay, and hundreds of key story-tools for dramatizing your story and characters.
You must have organizing software because of the complexity and amount of information there is to dramatically organize in writing your novel.
The haphazard way of writing a novel is to write a spontaneous first draft and then to improve on it by writing many more drafts. Where does this lead but to a lot of work and often not a well developed and suspenseful story. The best writers are organizers and planners. They keep working journals for notes, ideas, additions. Now this can all be done with software.
With organizing software and a writer’s interface you can do your organizing of your material quite easily and still keep track of it all, which is the goal of organizing software.
So, enjoy the planning also of your story. The Writer’s Interface can serve to inspire you also because of giving the writer so many writing techniques. Thus as a writer you are learning many new writing things with using The Writer’s Interface in interactive learning.
There is no money back guarantee. This is a software interface. You use it to learn it. This involves your commitment to writing. It’s not surface or superficial like so many writing programs. You are guided in the work of actually producing a full length story which may turn out to be a good novel.
We don’t call you great or fantastic. We put you to work.
The Writer’s Interface is a full length digital book of over 92,000 words which you use interactively as your guide along with the developed WriteItNow software, a full organizing and writing software.
Try the free demos, make your commitment, buy the full programs, and get to work for the next year or so.
The Writer’s Interface is the first comprehensive interface for using software to write a novel. It is written by a professional writer who has sold over 350,000 of his many books over the years. It represents his professional experience in writing and in teaching creativity as an expert psychologist.
The Writer’s Interface is the first full interface between the end user and his or her software ever published. Get it now. It will save you years of study and put you to work developing your story-craft to a high level.
