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Part One: The Blank Page. Tips to help you start writing.
This blog series will take you through the process of writing, editing and publishing your novel. If you are planning your first foray into writing, or you feel as though you are missing something but don’t know what, this is a completely free writing course that may be perfect for you. It may have some relevance to writers working on short stories, but it is designed to cover the challenges of longer pieces (50k words and over).
Whether you are starting a new novel, thinking about writing a novel, or stuck half way through the process, this series of articles is designed to offer help and new ways of looking at your craft.
Part One – The Blank Page, suggests ways to find inspiration, asks whether you should plan or write by the seat of your pants, and provides a cost-benefit analysis of events like NaNoWriMo.
Being faced with a blank page is either the most exciting or the most intimidating experience a writer can have. Often it is a combination of both. You may have a story already forming in your head but not know where to start, or you may have decided to write a novel without any idea of your subject or characters. Either way, you will have to start scribbling or typing at some point, but what to write first?
Making a start
There are many ways to start, or indeed finish, a novel. I will share the various ways I tackle the first page, and I will share alternative methods suggested by other writers. Only you can decide which one works best for you.
Some great writers claim they publish their first draft. However, I have seen the notebooks of many great authors in the British Library, and they are covered in hand-written revisions. If you get the opportunity to visit, it is an amazing experience, uplifting and humbling at the same time.
Attempting to write a publishable first draft would terrify me. I would probably freeze under the pressure of writing the perfect opening sentence. Luckily, we can revisit, revise and rewrite as many times as needed.
The NaNoWriMo technique for starting (and writing) a novel is to write quickly without overthinking. It tells you to complete your first draft before making any revisions, allowing you to tap into your creativity while ignoring your inner critic. The point is to get the bones of the story out of your head and onto the page before you start thinking about quality. If you spend months creating the perfect opening line, then you’ll have one line to show for your labour.
Starting with plot
If your story is already forming as you stare at the blank page, start writing it and see what happens. See where your imagination takes you. Allow your subconscious to breathe life into the settings and characters you create. There may be errors, but you can tidy those later.
If you write every day, you might start dreaming about your story. When I reach this stage, it stops feeling like hard graft. Ideas bubble over, spilling words onto the page.
If you stare at the blank page and the bones of a plot are nowhere to be found, what can you do?
Inspiration can be found anywhere. Try reading old or current newspapers for ideas. Sometimes a seed from a strange real-life event will cry out to be fictionalised and expanded. Fairy tales or historical epics can be reimagined and revised into new stories.
Starting with character
If you can imagine a strong central character, try throwing them into an unusual situation and working out how they will behave.
I presented a workshop about character creation for Romancing the Gothic. If you are interested, you can watch it here.
The Ballerina and the Revolutionary started as an exercise for my creative writing degree. We were asked to pick a number of items, find connections between those items, and use that to create a picture of the person who owned them. The character I imagined was Vivienne, Crow’s mother.
Alternatively, you could create the fictional inner lives of strangers in photographs.
If all else fails, there is nothing wrong with basing the central character on yourself. Most writers use aspects of themselves in their characters – it’s part of the "write what you know" doctrine.
Starting with setting
Settings can be as important as characters. If there is a place you know well – ideally, one that evokes great emotions within you – then it can be the springboard from which your plot develops. Your setting can be purely imaginary, in which case, you must make it real – the sights, sounds, smells, and weather are important.
Settings can have the same complexities as characters, and if your setting is at the centre of the story then the reader will want to know everything about it. In some books the setting is the central character – Ruins by Scott Smith and The Elementals by Michael McDowell are two examples of books where setting is character.
To plan or not to plan
There’s a wonderful word I learned from doing NaNoWriMo – pantster. It means writing by the seat of your pants.
When you have no plan, you can let your characters dictate the action. If you have no fixed ending to reach, there's no obligation to make characters behave unnaturally. They don't have to act strangely in order to reach an arbitrary plot point.
I'm a bit of a pantster. It’s exciting not knowing where a story will take me. It feels like I'm writer and reader at the same time, constantly surprised.
There is a downside to writing without any plan. It makes writer’s block more difficult to overcome when it strikes.
I have often written myself into a corner and had to return to an earlier point and rewrite everything from there.
When you hit a brick wall, and don’t have a plan, you may find yourself without a ladder.
Currently I am embarking on a new novel. This time, I have a plan.
NaNoWriMo
National Novel Writers’ Month was an international event where writers were challenged to pen 50,000 words over the thirty days of November, or 1667 words every day. If the idea of that terrifies you, then you should probably face your fears and try doing it, if only for the experience.
However, NaNoWriMo as an organisation received criticism about its inability to safeguard young writers, and in recent years many previous participants have eschewed the website while continuing to use the “just write” ethos – completing their 50,000 words alone or in smaller ad hoc groups. Last month the organisation announced it was closing.
Benefits
Writing for thirty days, working to a target of 1667 words per day, and refusing to delete or edit the manuscript until you have reached your 50k goal, forces you to keep writing. Focusing only on the creative part of your mind, while ignoring your inner critic, means that you are likely to surprise yourself, if not with a complete novel, at least with some imaginative gems that you can recycle and use to produce other work.
Costs
If you spend even a few days without writing, the task ahead can seem overwhelming. Some days you feel uninspired but force yourself to reach the word count, producing absolute rubbish that belongs in the bin, but after the dust settles in December, you can go through and cut swathes of useless material from your draft and still have something worthwhile.
I’ve included diary entries, shopping lists, and complaints about how hard the challenge of writing is when uninspired, just to reach the daily word count. But I had good days when I produced scenes that were more than worth the effort. Even if only 10,000 of the 50,000 words remain after the first full edit, you have started your novel.
The only way to write 50k in 30 days is to place your ego firmly in the back seat and be willing to write badly in order to write at all. Reading your first draft, you might be tempted to quit writing forever. Self doubt is the greatest risk you face when you accept this challenge. If you will judge your talent harshly based on a month’s worth of frenetic scribblings, then this is not the event for you.
Conclusion
With luck you feel ready to start writing. Do it now. Even if it’s just a couple of notes. Keep a notebook with you. Inspiration can strike at the most inconvenient time, but if you don’t jot down your ideas you will probably forget them. Find a comfortable place, keep something to drink beside you, open your mind and let your imagination take over. The only way to start writing a novel is to start writing.
Return next week for Part Two – Content and Themes, where we’ll look at the content and themes of your novel and ask whether your story is character- or plot-based (and what those terms mean). And I’ll ask you to consider the following question - what do you want people to think about while, and after, they read your story?
Carmilla Voiez is a horror and fantasy author. Her novels have been published by indie publishing companies including Vamptasy Publishing, CHBB and Stone Circle Publishing and her short stories have been included in anthologies by Crystal Lake Publishing, Clash Books, Weird Punk Books, Stitched Smile, Siren Magazine, and Dragones Mecanicos. She has a first-class degree in creative writing and English language, a diploma in proofreading and editing, and is a member of the Chartered Institute of Editors and Proofreaders.
Character-based vs plot-based.
What do you want people to think about as and after they read the story?
Includes: perspective, language, tenses.
Keeping going when it gets tough.
Rewriting, foregrounding the themes, deciding whose story this is.
Checking for consistency and avoiding unwanted repetition. Style sheets. Plugging the plot holes. Character arcs.
Understanding grammar. Common errors. The role of beta readers. Do you need to pay a professional?
Traditional vs self publishing. How to find an agent. How to snag a publisher. The elevator pitch. The dreaded synopsis. Starting something new.
Release parties. Paid adverts. Building connections. Book signings. Your Facebook page. Your website and SEO. Anthologies. Goodreads. Booktok
Join me on this journey through the writing process and feel free to comment if you have any questions or is you relate to the content. Learn the importance of a closed and an open door as you progress and start building a community of like-minded individuals who support each other’s efforts.
The resources I used while writing this course include:-
Creative Writing – Linda Anderson
On Writers and Writing – Margaret Atwood
Becoming a writer – Dorothea Brande
On Writing – Stephen King
The Art of Fiction -– David Lodge
A Creative Writing Handbook – Derek Neale
Story Structure Architect – Victoria Lynn Schmidt
The Writer’s Journey – Christopher Volger
Writing a Novel – Nigel Watts
and my own experiences.
Feel free to comment below with any specific points you would like me to include and I will try to weave them into my discussion in as great a depth as possible. I look forward to hearing from you over the coming weeks, and hope you will benefit from at least some of the points I raise.