Novel Writing

New writers often don’t even get started because they spend too much time worrying about which idea they should go with for their first novel. Well, here are some top tips to help any new writer cut through the ideas jungle so that they can start along the road to productivity.

1. Turn off your Inner Editor. Inside you there is a voice that says things like: “That’s no good”, “(insert your favourite author here) wouldn’t do it this way”, “blah blah blah, you don’t know what you’re doing” and even “You can’t write”. Turn off that voice. This Inner Editor will stop you from doing anything, because it is trying to judge what you are doing before you have even done it!
2. Create a short pitch. For each idea you are considering writing about, you can boil it down into its most interesting basics. Start with a single line, e.g. ‘A man decides to kill his wife and her lover.’ Then expand the single line description into no more than 100 words, e.g. ‘When a prolific child-murderer escapes justice yet again due to police negligence, a man holds his wife and her police chief lover responsible, as they have spent so much time together recently his police duties have been neglected. The husband carefully plans their deaths, and resolves to hunt down and kill the child-murderer himself. ‘ Once you have done this for a couple of ideas, one of them will be more appealing to you than the others. Start writing this one.
3. Talk to yourself. Don’t worry, nobody will know. Get yourself a recording device (tape, minidisc, mp3 with recorder, mobile phone with recorder, dictaphone, video camera…) and use it to talk to yourself about your ideas. Ask yourself questions. Answer them. If it helps, imagine that you are being interviewed on your favourite chat show about your recent successful novel (and then talk about how you thought it up, how you put in each plot twist and memorable character etc.) Then stop after 10 minutes (this is important, I don’t want you spending all your time talking to yourself!) and start writing.

These are just some ideas to help get you going. There will be plenty more in this First Novel series, so be sure to come back and follow each post! If you have any handy tips for new writers or first novels, why not comment below? Next time we’ll be taking a look at how to organise yourself to get writing.

Technorati Tags: first novel, novel summary, novel writing