Novel Writing

A common mistake among beginning novel writers is that the plot is just too basic. For example: ‘Man versus woman’ is not an adequate plot description, and neither is ‘A man is at war with his wife’. Also, ‘Revenge’ is not a plot.

Can you imagine pitching your prospective novel at a book fair, and when the literary agent turns to you and asks you what you are working on, you sweetly reply ‘Revenge!”? I’ll bet money that they will start backing away slowly towards the exit.

Can you imagine being at a writer’s conference or symposium where you get to meet your fans en masse and they ask you all manner of questions about your next eagerly anticipated novel? ‘What are you working on next?’ “Well,” you reply, as if you are about to divulge the secrets of life, the universe, and everything, “my next novel will be ‘Man versus woman’”. Hmmm.

No. Welcome to the reality of plot: a plot has to be a statement that does something. Those statements earlier in this post were conflicts, which is a great starting point for plot, but they weren’t doing anything with the conflict.

To properly describe the plot, you’ll have to describe the events that drive the story forwards and shape the characters. These characters will need to struggle with those conflicts towards a goal, with a beginning - middle - end structure that leads them on a journey.

In the next installment of this series on ‘Plot’, I’ll go into more detail about just how you construct an interesting one, and give you some exercises to do so that you can start to tinker with plot creation yourself in a meaningful way.

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Technorati Tags: first novel, new novels, novel summary, novel writing

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Technorati Tags: first novel, novel summary, novel writing