The First Three Weeks: DAYS 1–21
BRAINSTORM, CHART, AND OUTLINE
Have you ever heard the old saying,“Love is in the details”? This is a good way of thinking about the first few weeks of your ninety-day novel challenge. In these next weeks, you’ll be brainstorming, developing, and scrutinizing the details of your novel — characters, plots, conflicts, settings, voice, point of view, etc. — and, eventually, you’ll draft your initial working outline, the blueprint of your novel itself. Think of these first four weeks as your apprenticeship for the novel-writing process that will follow.
Great novels are not accidents. As much as you want to believe they are simply spawned from the brains of the greatest creative thinkers, in actuality, they take careful planning, developing, trimming, shaping, and forecasting. By now, hopefully you realize the necessity of an out-line in an undertaking such as this one. And though you may be tempted to simply skip ahead and begin writing your novel’s first draft, I caution you against it. You first want to make sure your ideas are solid, your characters are complex, and your plots are sustainable. If you do the necessary work in the planning stages, you’ll leave little to chance when you sit down to write your novel. Remember, our first ideas are not always our best ideas.
Each day during these first three weeks you’ll be introduced to a specific component of novel writing, and you’ll be asked to complete an assignment. These assignments are designed to address key elements of your novel, and each assignment will build upon the next. You may end up using some of your assignments from these weeks verbatim in the first draft of your novel. Other assignments are simply intended to help you develop and flesh out the direction of your ideas and will not be used directly — though likely indirectly — in your work.
You should plan on spending about thirty minutes reading and thinking about each day’s lesson and at least an additional two to three hours per day working on the writing exercises. Remember, the more work you do in the developmental stages now, the more you’ll be freed up to creatively explore your novelistic world during the drafting stages. You’ll find no easy shortcuts, so be sure to allot yourself an adequate amount of time as you approach each day’s assignments.
EIGHT SUGGESTIONS BEFORE YOU START:
1. Buy a timer and place it next to you as you write. This will help you keep track of how long you’ve been working — and how much time you have to go.
2. Place a “Do Not Disturb” note on your office door when you’re writing, if you don’t live alone.
3. Turn your phone to silent and don’t check it — or better yet, turn it off.
4. If you work on a computer, log off from the Internet. This way you won’t be tempted to check your e-mail or procrastinate by checking the weather.
5. Try to write at the same time every day, if possible. Doing so will help you foster a good writing habit.
6. Avoid too much television watching during the next few months. Instead, read some novels. Good ideas are often generated from reading and are seldom generated from Must-See TV.
7. Use the buddy system. If you know a friend, a group of friends, or even a writing group comprised of individuals who want to write a novel, take the ninety-day challenge together. You can reinforce each other, commiserate, inspire, complain, and help each other over those difficult writing slumps. Writing is a solitary enterprise, but talking about writing isn’t.
8. Have fun! You’re about to take those first teetering, yet exhilarating steps toward writing your novel. Embrace the challenge.
DAY 1: Ready, Set, Go (With What You Know)
You’ve always wanted to write a novel, but perhaps you don’t even know where to begin brainstorming sustainable, book-length-worthy plots and characters. If you’re like me, you may make mental notes to yourself through-out the week: “That’d be a good idea for a novel.” However, when it comes time to sit at my writing desk, I’ve forgotten some of my best ideas (unless I’ve written them down). They’ve disappeared into the ether of my brain, likely replaced by a grocery list or an errand I have to run. The good news is this: Ideas for your novel are all around you — within you, too. In fact, you may already know some of the characters or settings you’ll be writing about. You just don’t know it yet.
You’ve probably heard the old writer’s dictum, “Write what you know.” This, of course, is excellent advice; however, it does not simply mean you should only write about, literally, the people and places with which you have direct contact and intimate familiarity. Not only could that get really tiresome really quickly, but it might be better saved for your memoir or personal biography. However, your experiences and memories — the fine, rich details that form the tapestry of your life — make for excellent novelistic fodder and are often fantastic jumping points for exploring fictional worlds.
Meditating on your earliest childhood memories might trigger some noteworthy visual pictures: that concrete culvert you and your neighbors used to pretend was a bunker; a spot in the woods where a willow tree drooped its branches, creating a perfect imaginary house; the basement of the McDowells’ house that was lined from ceiling to floor with a collection of eclectic beer cans; or Janis Putts, your old neighbor who exiled you from her yard for stepping in her petunias. (You were only four, and that’s where your ball landed!)
Reaching back into the crevices of your brain, you might find some interesting and noteworthy characters, too. Individuals who were minor players in your real life, might somehow find their way onto the stage in the starring role in your novel’s world: Just who was that old man who was always sitting with a suitcase at the bus stop on Fifth Street? And why did Mrs. Ortenwagner live alone in that huge house up the hill? She would always retrieve the mail in her housecoat and slippers, her hair rolled up in curlers, even though she never seemed to go anywhere. Why did Miguel Mylar, the science teacher, burst into tears that day back in high school? He never came back to McKnight High after that. I’ve always wondered….
Memory can provide us with rich and intricate details that we might not even realize we remembered. What was your first memory? What did it feel like to be kissed the first time? What were some of your favorite smells as a child — and now as an adult? What was the most daring thing you ever did, or wished you did? Did you ever come close to getting everything you’ve ever wanted? Have you ever read a news story that just stuck with you because it was so bizarre, grotesque, or surreal? Have you ever seen a sight you wished you hadn’t seen?
When we explore our memories, we are not simply transporting ourselves back to the past, but we’re using our memories and imaginations to embellish what we once thought we knew. Philip Roth once explained, “Obviously the facts are never just coming at you but are incorporated by an imagination that is formed by your previous experience. Memories of the past are not memories of facts but memories of your imaginings of the facts.” What Roth means is that memories aren’t the literal events as they happened, but events as we always imagined they happened, in our minds. At their core, then, memories are embellished stories dissimilar from the original thing itself. Exploring your own history will help you embellish, expand, and manipulate experiences into fictional elements that resemble nothing of the original memory itself.
Assignment
In this exercise, brainstorm as many early memories as you can, writing them out in as much detail as possible, dedicating at least a paragraph to each. For this exercise, do not worry about writing in scene or editing yourself as you go. The goal is to keep brainstorming and to keep writing, as much as possible in the minimum of two hours you’re allotting yourself. If this is the first time you’ve written in a while, don’t feel pressured to write something perfect. Just let yourself write freely as you think about each memory. I’ve provided some prompts to get you started, though please don’t feel limited to these categories.
PEOPLE: Your favorite or worst teacher, the postman, your first babysitter, your neighbors, your first boyfriend/girlfriend, your childhood best friend, someone who got you in trouble, someone you admired from a distance, someone you thought was beautiful, your grandparents or most distant relative, the saddest person you ever saw, somebody you knew by sight but never met in person.
PLACES: The inside of your house, your bedroom, your favorite place to play as a child, somewhere you go when you want to be alone, your favorite vacation spot, the most cheerful place you ever visited, the most frightening place you’ve ever been. Perhaps a place you weren’t supposed to be?
THINGS: Your favorite coat as a child, your prized childhood possession, the way someone close to you smelled, your first pet, an old photograph that sticks out in your mind, the purse your mother used to carry, the sounds outside your window, how you felt when you gave/received your first kiss, how you felt at a time when you knew you did something wrong, how you felt when you didn’t get the praise you deserved.
DAY 2: Writing With Your Senses
Yesterday you spent some time recalling your own memories. As you brainstormed, hopefully you came up with some seedlings of an idea that, with planting, nurturing, and a little patience, might bloom into your novel. But even the greatest ideas in the world won’t take off if the writing falls flat. Or, to think of it another way, a rather bland idea can blossom if conveyed in a compelling way, through nurturing, life-giving details.
Every writer aims to immerse the reader so deeply into the story, to so hypnotize the reader with the details and the writing, that she continues turning the pages. You want your reader to feel like she’s literally present in your fictional world, running right alongside your characters as they get swept up in the action of the story. This is, after all, one of the reasons people read: to lose themselves in a world more interesting than their own.
Remember: Show, don’t tell. This old writer’s adage asks that writers not simply “report” the story: A man walked down the street. Instead, you should show us the man: Who is the man? What does he look like? How old is he? You should clarify his actions: How is he walking? Quickly or slowly? Does he limp? Are his shoulders hunched? You should show us the street: Is it urban or suburban? Wide or narrow? Is there a sidewalk? Is it littered? And, above all, you should give a reason for his walking: Is his car broken down? Is he on his way to work? Does he plan to meet someone soon? Or is this walk merely for exercise? Will he break into a run? All these details, put together, will create a much more cohesive and fully alive snapshot of the man walking down the street.
The best way to connect a reader to your story is through the senses. Consider this brief example from Flannery O’Connor’s short story “The Life You Save May Be Your Own”:
The old woman didn’t change her position until he was almost in her yard; then she rose with one hand fisted on her hip. The daughter, a large girl in a blue organdy dress, saw him all at once and jumped up and began to stamp and point and make excited speechless sounds.
In this snippet from O’Connor, a master of the short story, the reader can both see and hear the characters. We’re given colors (a blue organdy dress), motions (a fisted hand), and noises (excited speechless sounds) that help this scene materialize for the reader. Likewise, you should always offer your reader concrete and specific detail and use the senses as a guide. What can your characters taste, smell, see, feel, and hear? If you want your reader immersed in the story, they’ll need to taste, smell, see, feel, and hear these things, too.
Another lesson for making your story leap off the page will bring us back to high school English class. Do you remember studying active versus passive voice? Hurry, pop quiz:
Which of the following sentences is in active voice?
Julie is loved by David.
David loves Julie.
How about this one?
I heard from my sister that Shelby was accepted to a prestigious clown school.
It was heard by me from my sister that Shelby was accepted to a prestigious clown school.
Here’s another:
The award for Student of the Year was won by Laura.
Laura won the award for Student of the Year.
Extra credit: Do you remember the definition of active voice? Answer: In the active voice, the subject of the sentence is doing the action. In passive voice, the subject of the sentence is receiving the action. One surefire way to recognize passive voice in your writing, and then subsequently eliminate it, is to find and replace many of the “be” verbs with sharper, stronger verbs. Another pop quiz: What are the “be” verbs? These, of course, are all the forms of the verb “to be.”
am
is
are
was
were
being
been
So what does this grammar lesson have to do with writing a novel? Simply this: Writing in active voice makes writing more vivid, convincing, and confident. Active voice also helps you avoid unnecessary redundancy and awkward phrasings because active voice is more direct. Passive voice tends to lead to generalizations, and sentences or descriptions that lack specificity.
This is not to say that passive voice has no place in your fiction, and certainly it’s not realistic — or possible — to eliminate all uses of passive voice. However, good fiction writers pay attention to the difference between active and passive voice and, when they can, strive for the former rather than the latter.
But who wants to talk about grammar issues? Not me, other than to say this: The goal of your grammar usage in your novel is simple: Aim for invisibility. If your reader notices your usage, or rather, your incorrect usage, of grammar, punctuation, or other typos in your text, you’re going to draw them out of your story and onto the physical page. They’ll remember that they’re reading, not skiing in Aspen or investigating the black market in human organs with the characters you’ve created. If you do not know the general rules of grammar, you should look them up. Sooner rather than later. Like now. Consider purchasing a book such as the short, influential text The Elements of Style by Strunk and White.
Assignment
The goal of this assignment is to practice writing with your senses. Select two memories from yesterday’s writing and write a scene bringing each of these memories to life. What do you remember seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, feeling, or thinking? Try to provide as many details as possible, as you reimagine the event in your mind. How can you make the story come alive for your readers?
Next, I want you to print out and reread through what you’ve just written. Any time you come across one of the “be” verbs, I want you to circle it. Do you find yourself using these verbs often? Have you tried, whenever possible, to be aware of the active voice in your work?
DAY 3: Letting Your Old Ladies Scream
Think, for a moment, of your favorite novel — what is it you like about it? Even if you read it long ago, what do you remember? Chances are, you remember Bridget Jones’s hilarious self-deprecation in Bridget Jones’s Diary, or the forever angstridden and jaded Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye. Even if you’ve forgotten the plot, you’ll likely remember the commonsense ingenuity of Tom Sawyer, the idealism and naive romanticism of Emma Bovary, or the vapid party guests of the money-and-love-obsessed Jay Gatsby.
The characters you cast for your novel will be the single most important factor in your book. Why? Because characters are the driving force of your novel, the lifeblood of fiction, and nearly every other element of your novel is related to the characters you choose. For example, what happens to your characters and how they respond is your plot. Style and tone and voice reflect your character’s intellect, personality, and mood. Even setting is determined in large part by your character. Where does he or she choose to live? What do her home and surroundings say about her? Does her bedroom have black lights and psychedelic posters or ornately framed original artwork and a bowl of cinnamon potpourri? These decisions are reflective of character, too.
Mark Twain explains to us, “Don’t tell us that the old lady screamed. Bring her on and let her scream.” Twain reminds us that when we create characters so complete, so fully rounded, they’ll jump off the page and feel so real that the reader just knows them. The reader can actually hear, in their minds, your old ladies screaming; they aren’t simply told that the old ladies are hollering. That makes for a big difference in the reading experience.
When we use the phrase “She is such a character!” typically, we mean that the personality of that individual — let’s name her Glenda — is so particular to Glenda that nobody else is quite like her. Maybe she’s exceptionally daffy or neat to a fault. Maybe she asks you to put plastic baggies around your feet as you walk through her house. (“Common household dust is the number-one cause of asthma in cats!” she might say. Oh, dear. That’s so Glenda.)
Let’s return, for a moment, to Ernest Hemingway’s theory of the iceberg that we explored in a previous section. Hemingway once wrote, “If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows, and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of the iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water. The writer who omits things because he does not know them only makes hollow places in his writing.” Hemingway’s theory of the iceberg is quite similar to William Blake’s grain of sand. If we know our characters — and I mean really know our characters — our readers will, by default, feel they truly know them, too. We don’t have to be told that Huck Finn would rather wear overalls than dress pants — we’ve been given one-eighth a glimpse of him, and we can figure out the rest for ourselves.
But how well do you need to know your character before you begin? We’ll be discussing character development in depth later in this book, but before you even write a single word, you should consider all aspects of your character’s history, experiences, baggage, complications, fears, and desires. But in addition to these “big” aspects of character, you should also know some smaller, finer nuances. For instance, do you know their favorite flavors of ice cream? How about their shoe sizes? If they were going to buy a pair of shoes, what brand would they most likely purchase? Gucci or Birkenstocks? Hiking boots or stilettos?
We can guess that Jay Gatsby’s favorite flavor of ice cream is double-chocolate chip — as rich and decadent as you can get. We might guess that, if he were still alive, he’d buy only the most expensive suits from Brooks Brothers. His bedroom might be deep mahogany because it feels rich. Even though F. Scott Fitzgerald never mentions these details in his novel, he showed us one-eighth of the iceberg, and we were able to intuit — subtextually — the other seven-eighths.
Here are some other, less obvious questions you might want to consider:
• What does your character want most in life?
• What was the most important thing to have ever happened to your character?
• What is this character’s middle name?
• Where does your character work?
• What is this character’s favorite thing about himself?
• How does this character drink her coffee?
• What is this character’s favorite holiday?
• What kind of music might this character listen to?
• What is the color of this character’s bedroom?
• What are this character’s favorite childhood memories?
• What age was this character when he first kissed a girl? What was her name?
• What scares this character the most?
At this point, as you begin to brainstorm a cast of characters, you don’t necessarily need to know what your character will “do” in your novel, or what role he or she will play. You simply need to know enough about your character so that when faced with a difficult or character-defining decision in your novel, you won’t have to wonder how he or she will react. Like muscle memory, your character’s natural personality traits and desires will determine these decisions for you.
Assignment
The goal of this assignment is to familiarize yourself with a minimum of ten characters. First, select three “people” you revisited in your Day 1 exercise and write a one-page character bio for each. You’ll want to consider not only your character’s history, experiences, family, and outlook, but also some of the smaller details listed in the questions above. (See sample Character Bio Worksheet on page 61; I encourage you to make copies and use this as a template for your work.)
Once you’ve completed these three character bios, write a character bio for at least seven other interesting or compelling characters that may become a part of your novel. Remember: Don’t worry at this point about each character’s actual role in your novel. Simply focus on getting to know your characters the best you can.
I suggest posting these bios to the bulletin board above your desk, or putting them all in a three-ringed binder and referring back to them later in the writing process, when you’re questioning what your character would do in a particular situation.
DAY 4: Plot Happens
Fiction writer Flannery O’Connor wrote, “If nothing happens, it’s not a story.” In a story, something happens. Sounds pretty simple, right? In your story something has to happen, and we often refer to this as your plot.
We spent some time talking about character in the previous lessons because character is absolutely crucial to all novel writing, whether you’re writing a character-based novel or a plotbased novel. On some levels these distinctions are meaningless: characters are absolutely central to both types of novels.
It’s less useful to think about plot as what happens in a novel. Instead, it’s more useful to think about it as what happens to a particular character and how she responds to it, thus causing other plot points. Flannery O’Connor might have said, “If nothing happens to someone, it’s not a story.” In a story, something happens to someone. And depending on your character’s motivations and desires, his fears and values, just how he responds to this “something” will differ. For example, a lawyer will respond differently to witnessing a car accident than a doctor would. The lawyer might be primarily concerned with assessing fault, while the doctor first checks to see if everyone is okay.
Fiction writer and critic E.M. Forster, in his book Aspects of the Novel, defines plot’s function with the novel as being causal in nature. That is, one event causes another, and this is how plot differs from its more chronological cousin story. The example he gives us is simple: “The king died and then the queen died” is not a plot. Instead, this is simply a listing of events that happened, perhaps chronologically, without a cause-and-effect relationship. “The king died and then the queen died of grief” — now this, says Forster, is a plot. The king dies, for whatever reason (in our example let’s say the king is goodly and kind, so let’s imagine the reasons were quite natural, old age, perhaps), and then the queen becomes grief-stricken. Perhaps she won’t eat or sleep. Perhaps this exacerbates an underlying condition. The king died, and the queen responded with grief, thus dying herself. But Forster’s example could have continued: What happens next, after the queen dies? Perhaps the kingdom is inherited by the royal couple’s greedy, short, balding son, who feels quite self-conscious about his shiny globe. He forces all his subjects to shave their heads — but one person resists. What happens next? Well, depending on the characters’ motivations and personality, the plot will evolve accordingly. Will the town become shaven ditto heads, or will one man lead a coiffure mutiny?
Plot is not simply an arbitrary decision made by you, the writer. Instead, the plot derives from the natural reactions of your characters to the events that unfold throughout the novel. If the queen hadn’t loved the king, for instance, borrowing again from E.M. Forster’s example, she may have lived a long life, quickly taking another husband. Certainly this would have changed the outcome of the unfolding plot. The more you know your characters before you begin writing your novel, the more natural the responses will seem to your reader. You’ll have an easier time writing your scenes, too, if you have a sense of how a character, based on his or her personality, might react in a given situation.
While there is no magic formula that generates page-turning plots, consider this quotation from fiction writer Robert Olen Butler: “Fiction is the art form of human yearning. That is absolutely essential to any work of fictional narrative art — a character who yearns. And that is not the same as a character who simply has problems…. The yearning is also the thing that generates what we call plot, because the elements of the plot come from thwarted or blocked or challenged attempts to fulfill the yearning.”
Simply put: Yearning generates plot.
Your characters must want something — must yearn for something — and if you wish to sustain your novel’s plot, you, the writer, must not give it to him. You should ask yourself these questions:
• What does my character want most in the world?
• What obstacles, events, or people will stand in the way of my character getting what he wants?
Gatsby, more than money, parties, and fancy shirts, wants Daisy. What’s standing in his way? Well, Daisy’s husband, Tom Buchanan, for one. It is this profound longing that propels the major plot points in The Great Gatsby. Gatsby both acts and reacts to his yearning and his thwarted desires.
Assignment
First, for a warm-up: From the chart on page 66, choose a character from list A, and a quality from list B, and write a one-hundred–word character sketch. Next, choose a situation from list C. Brainstorm the ways in which such a character, when faced with this particular situation, might naturally react to or against it. The purpose of this exercise is to demonstrate that plot isn’t simply what happens, but rather how a character responds to a given situation. Write a short scene. (You may find that you like your character in this exercise, and if so, feel free to write up a longer character bio to include in your binder.)
| LIST A | LIST B | LIST C |
| A celebrity chef | Sinister | Gets in a car accident |
| An Elvis impersonator | Alcoholic | Wins the lottery |
| A failed Wall Street broker | Sexist | Accidentally kills a man |
| A social climber | Anxious | Enters hot-dog-eating contest |
| A lottery winner | Narcoleptic | Finds self in bank holdup |
| A Civil War reenactor | Egomaniacal | Finds baby on doorstep |
| A movie extra | Hyper-self-conscious | Goes to high school reunion |
| A Political Activist | Germaphobe | Sets a house on fire |
Because this is the first scene you’re writing in this process, it’s good to remind yourself that all scenes have a beginning, a middle, and an end. Can you recognize each of these parts in your scenes?
Now, I’d like you to spend some time with at least five characters you wrote bios for on Day 2. For each character, write a paragraph answering the following questions: What does my character want most in the world? What obstacles, events, or people will stand in the way of my character getting what he wants? This may take you some time because you’ll need to reread the bios and refamiliarize yourself with the personality traits, history, and life experiences of each one.
Once you have finished, you’ll have a greater sense of what motivates your characters and what, in turn, will propel your novel forward. But you’re not done writing for the day! Before you take off your writer’s cap, I want you to compose a 250-word synopsis for your current novel idea. Who will be your major protagonists? What major events might take place? Does the synopsis seem interesting enough to sustain a novel-length work? Don’t worry if your story idea morphs throughout the next few weeks. Your final synopsis may resemble nothing of this one; however, the goal for now is to come up with a cohesive, holistic vision of what your book may look like.
DAY 5: Setting the Setting
Famed poet and writer Marianne Moore once described poetry as “the art of creating imaginary gardens with real toads.” This dictum, of course, can easily be applied to the craft of fiction writing. As writers, we must create imaginary worlds that feel so real to the reader that he or she becomes invested in your work and believes this world really exists somewhere beyond the page. Perhaps you’ve felt this way, too: After you’ve closed a book like To Kill a Mockingbird, you want to believe there actually exists a small southern town named Maycomb where the likes of people named Boo, Atticus, Scout, and Jem still live. Or maybe, in your mind, you believe you really could take a summer holiday in East or West Egg (though you’ve heard the rental prices are sky-high during the summer months). Perhaps you’d run into Daisy or Tom Buchanan there. I’m sure millions of people — teens and adults alike — wish they could someday visit the Shire to say hello to Bilbo Baggins and his hobbit friends or dream to someday enroll themselves or their children at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Universal Studios is betting over $250 million on the latter, in fact, for its addition to one of their theme parks that “re-creates” this fantastical setting from J.K. Rowling’s books.
We’ve spent some time in the previous lessons discussing character and plot — the who and what of your novel — but what about the where and the when? Certainly, this is an integral decision, too. How would To Kill a Mockingbird have differed had it been set in New York City? What if The Great Gatsby took place on Planet Nebulon12XX12? These would have been different novels entirely, of course. Remember, Maycomb, East/West Egg, she Shire, and Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry were all figments of their authors’ imaginations until they were banged out, bit by bit, onto a typewriter or computer.
Your novel’s setting is not simply the backdrop of your novel. The choices you make about where and when to set your novel — just as the choices you make about all other aspects of your novel — are not arbitrary ones, and so it’s important to consider the kind of work that setting can and should be doing within your work.
Fiction mirrors reality in several ways, and setting is one of them. Where a character lives, for instance, and how he or she chooses to decorate, clean, organize, and arrange their living space, for example, can say a good deal about that individual. For example, as I type this, I’m looking at my office space. Stacks of student essays, yet to be graded, are piled high on my desk. Some printed articles, research for a novel-in-progress, are scattered across my floor. Aside from my keyboard, you can barely see my desk. Here are some coffee mugs, there are some pens, here is a dictionary, there are some bills. What does this description say about me and my living habits? How might you extend this to a description of my personality? Wait, don’t answer that. Stop!
Instead let’s take a look at an excerpt from the oftanthologized short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in 1892. This story revolves around a woman with “a slight hysterical tendency” who is put on bed rest in the former nursery of an old mansion she and her husband have rented for the summer:
It is a big, airy room, the whole floor nearly, with windows that look all ways, and air and sunshine galore. It was nursery first and then playroom and gymnasium, I should judge; for the windows are barred for little children, and there are rings and things in the walls.
The paint and paper look as if a boys’ school had used it. It is stripped off — the paper — in great patches all around the head of my bed, about as far as I can reach, and in a great place on the other side of the room low down. I never saw a worse paper in my life. One of those sprawling flam-boyant patterns committing every artistic sin.
It is dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough to constantly irritate and provoke study, and when you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit suicide — plunge off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in unheard of contradictions.
The color is repellent, almost revolting; a smouldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight.
It is a dull yet lurid orange in some places, a sickly sulphur tint in others.
No wonder the children hated it! I should hate it myself if I had to live in this room long.
The first description of the room where the protagonist is confined offers up a clear description: The walls are barred, the wallpaper is flamboyantly patterned and irritates the eye. The color of the room is revolting, unclean, sickly looking. It should come as no surprise, then, to the astute reader, that the description of this room, the setting, soon becomes representative of the narrator’s state of mind. (I won’t give away the ending, but the narrator kind of loses it….)
Where your own characters live and how they choose to decorate their home will say a lot about them. Does your character decorate the room with expensive nineteenth-century artwork in gilded frames? Or does he tack beer posters depicting scantily clad women in the living room? Does he live in a mansion, a house, an apartment, a cave? (Think of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man; the protagonist in this novel lives in a closed-off basement room in a building that allows for only white tenants to live there.) All these choices will say something about your character’s personality, habits, and values.
In addition to revealing aspects of your character’s personality, setting can also expose the mood of your character. Have you ever noticed that when you’re in a foul mood, you are more likely to observe the uglier side of things, such as stained carpets or crooked teeth on the woman who is smiling at you? When you are feeling upbeat, however, you notice things such as the dew-touched flowers, the sun peeking out of the clouds, the gentle rustle of leaves in the warm fall breeze. Take, for instance, this one-line description of setting in the final pages of Love in the Time of Cholera when Florentino Ariza is finally reunited with the woman he loves after fifty-three years, seven months, and eleven days (yes, he’s counted): “Then he looked through the windows at the complete circle of the quadrant on the mariner’s compass, the clear horizon, the December sky without a single cloud, the waters that could be navigated forever….”
Though subtle, Florentino’s state of mind is reflected in this description. The sky is blue, cloudless, clear. Florentino’s in love, and he’s noticing the beauty in the world. How might his perspective have changed had he just been defeated in love? Perhaps he wouldn’t even be able to see past the window; perhaps he’d focus only the dirt and finger smudges that were standing between him and an empty sky. Setting is every bit a matter of perspective, and perspective reflects of the temperament of the viewer.
Additionally, setting can mark the tone of a scene. How would a story that begins on a dark and stormy night differ from one that begins in the first days of spring, when tulips begin poking out of the ground like eager tongues? They’d differ greatly, of course.
But don’t forget that setting isn’t simply about where the story is taking place, but also when. The time period of your story will dictate the social conventions of the day — attitudes, styles, and lingo. If you choose to set your novel in the past, you’re going to have to do a bit of research. In what time period would a character likely say “Far out!” or “Groovy!” or “Rad!” or “Cool!” or “Sweet!” when responding in an excited way? What were the prevailing cultural, political, or social thoughts? How might The Invisible Man differ now if it were rewritten in modern times?
Consistency is important in creating your imaginary world, even if your fictional setting has no basis in reality. Be certain you aren’t simply placing your characters on an empty backdrop devoid of any real meaning. Use setting to orient your reader, reveal character traits, expose moods, and set the tone.
Assignment
The goal of this assignment is to examine the various uses of setting in your work.
First, select at least three of your characters from your bios and write a description of where they live. Keep in mind that where your character lives and how she decorates and/ or maintains her home will go a ways toward uncovering her personality. Try to provide as many sensory details as possible. What does your character see, hear, smell, or feel? After you’ve done this, write a description of each character’s favorite space. Is it an art gallery? A park? A church? What do you think attracts your character to this space?
Next, using one of the plot points in the synopsis you’ve written for yesterday’s lesson, write a scene that specifically uses setting to reveal the mood of the character and the tone of the scene. How can you utilize setting to reflect your character’s interiority in subtle ways?
Finally, do a bit of research on the time period of your novel — even if you’ve set your novel in contemporary culture. What kind of details can you add to make your story realistic? Are your characters wearing skinny jeans or bell-bottoms? Tie-dye or girdles? Now write a short scene, separate from the one you’ve already written, incorporating some of your research.
DAY 6: The Heart of the Heart of Your Novel
Let’s face it — the word sentimental, nowadays, is used to describe a negative impression a reader might have about a novel. “Sentimental” is often launched as an insult, meaning the story was a bit too precious, or tugged on the heart-strings in a transparent, saccharine, sweet way. However, it’s important to note the difference between sentimental and sentiment. The former turns off readers, the latter draws them in.
An emotional core is absolutely necessary to any good novel — otherwise, why should your readers even care? Think about the novels that have stayed with you long after you’ve read them. Perhaps a reason you felt such a connection to the work is because you connected, emotionally, with the main character. You, too, have experienced heart-break, or disappointment, or loneliness, or confusion, or affection like theirs.
Many novels hinge upon internal tension or conflict — derived, of course, from emotional complexity. Think of our example of Daisy Buchanan; she loves two people at once: Gatsby and her husband. These conflicting desires cause much turmoil in the novel — yet they are mostly internally driven. But how do writers convey the range of emotions that a novel should contain? Well, with practice, of course. First, writers must learn the difference between writing emotions and simply writing about emotions.
Let’s remind ourselves again of Mark Twain’s sage advice, “Don’t tell us that the old lady screamed. Bring her on and let her scream.” Twain knew very well that readers don’t want to be told how to think or how to feel — instead they want to experience emotions and sensations vicariously through the characters themselves. A reader who is told that “Billy felt sad” will likely not feel the weight of his sadness. However your reader most certainly will feel Billy’s sorrow if he experiences it with him, through physical descriptions. Writing emotions asks you to trust your reader enough to intuit your character’s emotional state through his physical state.
Think of a time you felt an intense emotion. Let’s say you were angry. ANGRY-ANGRY. What did you do? How did you feel? Did you clench your teeth so tightly that your jaw began to hurt? Was your face red and hot to the touch? Were the muscles in your neck and face tensed up, so you felt a bit like a sand-stuffed hacky sack? Were your hands balled into fists that felt like rocks? I’m sure you’ve experienced at least some of these sensations. The takeaway is this: All emotions, even your own, are experienced through physical sensations.
Instead of writing, “Billy felt sad,” describe exactly how he feels this sadness on a physical level. Does his mouth feel like it’s stuffed with cotton balls? Do his eyes sting? Does his heart feel like it has sunken into his stomach and is now being digested by his stomach acids? Does the world suddenly feel empty and quiet — does the air feel weighty around his body? It will be precisely through these physical sensations that you’ll be able to connect your reader to the internal workings of your characters.
One key to writing about emotion is focusing on word choice. Mark Twain, again, has some wise words to share with us. Twain once noted, “The difference between the right word and the almost right word is … the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.” Twain’s advice here should be taken to heart, especially with matters of the heart. Be sure you’re paying particular attention to word choice as you describe the emotions of your character in any given scene. Does Billy storm out of the room? Stagger out of the room? Lumber out of the room? Totter out of the room? Crawl out of the room? Each of these words has a unique connotation, and selecting the right word — not the almost-right word, as Twain advises us — is going to make all the difference.
Take a look at how Ian McEwan, in his novel-turned-major-motion-picture, Atonement, captures the essence of his character’s emotions. If you’ve read this novel — or even seen the movie — you’ll remember the early scene in the library, where Briony, the novel’s child-protagonist, witnesses her sister, Celia, making love to her suitor, Robbie. Several scenes later, Briony finds her cousin Lola, who has just been raped in the woods near her house by an unknown attacker. McEwan writes:
Lola was sitting forward, with her arms crossed around her chest, hugging herself and rocking slightly. The voice was faint and distorted, as though impeded by something like a bubble, some mucus in her throat. She needed to clear her throat. She said, vaguely, “I’m sorry, I didn’t, I’m sorry...”
Lola’s body language, her muddled voice, and the feeling of mucus in her throat resonate with the reader in a way that stating, “She was shocked” simply would not. We can almost hear that weak voice, muffled by a mucousy lump in her throat — and this is enough to tell us what we need to know about Lola’s current state of mind.
But emotion can be conveyed in other ways. You’ve heard the saying “Actions speak louder than words.” How your character acts and reacts to the events before him, and what he says directly, will tell the reader something about your character. This may seem an obvious point, but it’s one worth considering. Let’s continue reading this same scene from Atonement. This time I’ve labeled in brackets where emotion is being conveyed:
Briony whispered, “Who was it?” and before that could be answered, she added, with all the calm she was capable of, “I saw him. I saw him.” [Dialogue; hints at Briony’s pressuring]
Meekly, Lola said,” Yes.” [Dialogue that characterizes; Lola is impressionable]
For the second time that evening, Briony felt a flowering of tenderness for her cousin. Together they faced real terrors. She and her cousin were close. Briony was on her knees, trying to put her arms round Lola and gather her to her, but the body was bony and unyielding, wrapped tight about itself like a seashell. A wrinkle. Lola hugged herself and rocked. [Emotion through description]
Briony said, “It was him, wasn’t it?” [Briony wants Lola to label her attacker as Robbie, but Lola is reticent]
She felt against her chest, rather than saw, her cousin nod, slowly, reflectively. [Emotion through physical description] Perhaps it was exhaustion.
After many seconds Lola said in the same weak, submissive voice, “Yes. It was him.” [Resolution to scene; Lola concedes to falsely asserting that Robbie was her attacker]
In this scene, we learn a lot about Briony through both her brief clips of dialogue and her actions.
Briony, having earlier witnessed her sister having sex with Robbie, has conflated these two events, and she pressures Lola to name Robbie as her attacker. At this point, we learn that the novel is headed along a tragic arc, not a romantic or fanciful one — and it just might be Briony we have to blame for the results. Her foolish, girlish ego, her desire to be inquisitive, to be in the know, is about to wreak havoc with the lives of people she loves. Emotions like juve-nile jealousy — Briony has a crush on Robbie and knows he loves her sister — will push aside reason, cause unexpected action, create conflict, and mask the truth. To atone, after all, one must have done something terribly, horribly wrong, and then, of course, feel remorseful for those actions.
How might this novel have taken a different direction had Briony’s words or actions taken a different trajectory in this particular scene? What if Briony only acted in a way that showed concern for Lola, instead of immediately seeking the name of her assailant? Had Briony run to find an adult or simply helped Lola to her feet and back to the house, her actions would have portrayed her as sympathetic, noble, and compassionate.
But then there wouldn’t have been much of a novel, would there? One reason, I imagine, that so many viewers and readers connected with Atonement is that they related to the range of emotions they faced: Love, lies, strife, lone-liness, guilt, pain — these are the complexities of the human condition and the central complication of the novel.
Assignment
The goal of this assignment is to practice conveying emotion through physical description, dialogue, and action. Remember — never tell your reader exactly what a character is feeling. Instead let emotions evolve organically through description and action.
First, to warm up, select at least three of your characters from your bios and write a short scene for each wherein the character is experiencing a deep emotion — fear, anger, sadness, devastation, guilt. Try your best to convey this emotion only through physical sensation and action.
Next, write a short scene where one of the characters above is feeling a strong emotion, but is in a public place and can’t reveal it adequately. (Perhaps she is having a panic attack at a job interview but wants to convey confidence. Or perhaps she is in an important business meeting but just learned her newlywed husband is having an affair.)
Finally, write a longer scene involving two or more characters. In this scene, at least one of your characters must want something he/she cannot have. (You may want to revisit some of your bios to remind yourself of your character’s yearnings and motivations.) As your characters deal with strong emotions, what you come up with may surprise you. You may be developing important plot points for your novel.
DAY 7: Say What?! Some Tips on Dialogue
In an earlier lesson, we cited character formation as the single most important aspect in all novels. We then spent the next few days thinking about how your characters will be revealed through their actions and motivations, how to use setting to explore the mood and personality of your characters, and how to best convey the inner sentiments of those characters. By now you know that an emotional core, derived from your characters’ internal lives, is fundamental to any complex and interesting story.
One problem I’ve noticed in my students’ writings is that they create really interesting, complex, nuanced characters, but they fail to engage them with any of their other characters. In their “real lives” most people tend to be non-confrontational — especially writer types — and sometimes this rubs off in their writing as well. If you create interesting characters, don’t confine them to their own heads; let them walk, talk, and interact with the other characters you’ve created.
What a person says, too, can go a long way toward revealing her character. Perhaps your character wants to seem smart, so she tries using unusually big words, only to misuse them: “That bombastic cupcake is ostentatiously scrumptious, I decry!” If a character is a scientist or a doctor, perhaps he uses technical terms. Instead of saying “My wife is pregnant,” he might explain, “My spousal partner has a fetus in utero.” Or if a character is an auto mechanic, perhaps he uses metaphors suited for his profession: “That’d be as embarrassing as an El Dorado with a rusted muffler.” Oh, boy. That is embarrassing
Consider, too, when what a character says differs from what he thinks:
“I love you,” said Penelope.
“Uh … I love you, too,” Ricky said, because he didn’t know what else to say. He watched her snap her gum, and in this moment she looked even more like a horse. He needed to find a way to let her down easy.
When done artfully, a scene of dialogue can make a reader feel like she is in the room with Penelope and Ricky, cringing at the awkwardness of the exchange. When done poorly, rest assured the reader will be cringing at the author’s ill attempt at writing dialogue. Remember, dialogue should sound true to life, and everyone speaks differently. Be sure your dialogue is distinctive and authentic to the character doing the speaking.
Your written dialogue should always be working to reveal the depth, intentions, or actions of your character. A common mistake is using dialogue as “filler” that simply describes the setting or narrates the plot. Consider this scene:
“What is the weather like outside today?” asked Penelope.
“The sky is blue, and the silhouettes of ducks taking flight to the south are lovely, like planes flying overhead,” said Ricky.
“I am going to get in my car and drive to the hair salon,” said Penelope. “My strawberry-blonde hair could use a good cut.”
“Wait, I hear a knock on the door,” said Ricky. “Why, it’s the mailman, and he has an important letter from my dying aunt. What’s this? She’s dead. But she’s left me her estate! I’m rich! See you later, horse-face! Don’t let the door hit you on the way out!”
A scene such as this one will quickly lead your reader to skip these pages or put down your book altogether. A good general rule to follow when allowing your characters to speak directly is this: Dialogue should always aim to reveal some character trait about the individual who is speaking. If your character speaks a line of dialogue in order to describe the setting, this description should also reveal an element of your character’s interiority. What does Ricky’s line of dialogue about the lovely ducks flying south reveal about him? Does it indicate that he’s sensitive? If so, why does he call his girlfriend “horse-face”? If the spoken line of description doesn’t tell us much about your character, that line will be better served in a paragraph of exposition. Dialogue should accomplish two things at once: Describe a setting and tell us something about a character; convey plot-forwarding action and provide the reader with your character’s history; establish tone and show how your character’s dialogue conflicts with his indirect thoughts. However, each line of dialogue should give your reader insight into your character’s mind, personality, or motivations.
Here are some other general rules to follow when writing a dialogue scene:
• Avoid beginning a scene with a line of dialogue. It’s a good idea to first orient your reader to the setting and who is present at the scene. Readers process information in the order they receive it, so if you launch into dialogue before setting the scene, they may not know who is speaking and to whom.
• Be sure to describe what your character is doing while he is speaking. When Ricky tells Penelope that he loves her, is he looking at the floor? Is he flipping through channels on the television set?
• Be sure to give some insight into what the characters are thinking versus what they are saying. Such a contrast will provide tension in your scene.
• Be sure to balance dialogue with descriptions of setting and paragraphs of exposition. Dialogue scenes are often a great place to “sneak in” sentences of exposition and character history that might stand out if contained in a separate paragraph. For example:
“I love you, too,” Ricky said. He doubted there was such a thing as love. His ex-wife told him she loved him all the time, all the while sleeping with his brother, Mickey.
• Less is more when it comes to dialogue. People don’t often speak in long paragraphs. At least not without some breaks. Dialogue scenes can quicken the pace of a novel and give your reader a needed rest from long paragraphs of exposition or description.
• Your characters should all speak differently from one another. If you randomly extracted a line of dialogue from your novel, you should be able to tell to whom it belongs simply by analyzing the diction, content, and tone.
• Make sure you include dialogue tags so we know who is speaking and to whom. A simple “he said” or “she said” usually works best and does not draw attention to itself as “He pontificated wildly” might. Your goal is to aim for invisibility when writing dialogue tags, so this is not the best place to demonstrate your creativity.
• Avoid too many adverbs in your dialogue tags that tell your reader how to “interpret” a line of dialogue. Consider this example: “‘I hate you, I hate you, I hate you, Ricky!’ Penelope said angrily after Ricky insulted her equine mug.” If Penelope is saying something as strong as “I hate you, I hate you, I hate you,” we can assume she’s saying it angrily. Your dialogue should be able to, pardon the pun, speak for itself. Trust that your reader will “get” it.
• Avoid overusing exclamation points! These can be easily distracting and irritating to your reader! Plus, it makes it seem like your characters are breathlessly exclaiming something, when this isn’t always the case! Punctuation should, like dialogue tags, never draw attention to itself! Never ever!
• Always read your dialogue out loud. When you do this, you’ll be able to pick up on awkward phrases and dialogue that sounds stilted. It will also help you generate ideas.
Assignment
The goal of this assignment is to practice engaging your characters with other characters, and, in addition, to practice writing dialogue to reveal elements of your characters. Keep in mind that what a person says, how she says it, or how it conflicts with her internal musings will do a lot of the muscle work of character development.
First, think of some real individuals you’ve come into contact with today (waitress, coat-check girl, car-wash attendant, etc.) and place them each in a scene with one of your characters. How will these individuals interact? What might they discuss? You never know when one of these “minor contacts” will have a big impact on a more prominent character. (And if you find one of these minor characters interesting, you may wish to draw up a separate character bio.)
Next, write a short dialogue scene involving your two characters least likely to interact in your novel. What might they discuss? You never know when you might learn something about these characters that you didn’t know before. (And if you do learn something important, be sure to update your character bio to reflect this.)
Finally, write a dialogue scene involving at least two of your characters who are directly at odds with one another. For now, don’t worry if you don’t actually envision this as a scene in your novel. Just focus on integrating action, descriptions of setting, and descriptions of your characters’ body language. After you’ve finished, review the general rules for integrating dialogue. Did you adhere to these?
DAY 8: Choosing Your Eyeballs
By now, you’ve been hard at work on your novel for over a week! If you’re not accustomed to such a rigorous writing schedule, you may feel exhausted and eager for some praise. So I say: Good job. Go ahead and pat yourself on the back. But then get back to work. Hopefully, if you’ve been dedicating yourself to at least two hours of writing each day, your excellent progress is reward enough. Keep writing. You are only a fraction of the way there. (7¨M90ths to be exact.)
In previous assignments, you were asked to consider some of the primary actors in your novel. And maybe by now you know who will stand out as the central characters in your story. But who is actually going to tell your story? Which point of view (POV) will you use? Whose head will you allow your reader to access? The point of view is going to be an essential decision you’ll want to make fairly early on in the novel-writing process. Essentially, POV is the perspective from which your story is narrated.
Keep in mind that the character you choose to narrate your novel will affect the overall voice, tone, and style of your work. It will also affect how the story gets told, what events are emphasized or deemphasized, and how the events are filtered, through the character, to your reader. For instance, how might To Kill a Mockingbird have changed if it weren’t narrated by Scout, a child at the time of the novel’s main events? Scout is both innocent and nonjudgmental, which clearly comes to bear on the narrating of the events itself. How might The Great Gatsby have been less effective had Jay Gatsby himself been the narrator? What about the recent novel The Lovely Bones? This novel is narrated by Susie Salmon, who announces from the novel’s first sentence that she’s already dead and narrating from the great beyond. The novel would have been an entirely different entity altogether had a different narrator taken the helm — and quite possibly, the novel wouldn’t have been as enormously popular. One reason readers are drawn in so quickly, I imagine, is because of the unique point of view.
So I’ll say it again: Whom you choose to tell your story will have a dramatic impact on the story itself.
Consider this scenario:
Three people are in a diner: a waitress, a male customer at the counter, whose face is badly disfigured, and a female customer at a window table in the corner. Coffee is spilled on the male customer at the counter. “I’m going to send you the bill for my dry cleaning! No — I’ll SUE you,” the man yells before he leaves. “Never come back here again!” yells the waitress at the same time.
Now let’s consider this scenario from each varying point of view.
• The man at the counter feels self-conscious because of his face — scarred in a house fire set by his ex-wife. Since then, he’s harbored a misogynistic attitude toward women. He was watching the waitress, but then he saw that look in her eyes: pity and disgust. She couldn’t disguise it, he imagined. “More coffee?” she asked him, holding out the pot. He leans in slightly to whisper something, but he never gets the chance to say it. The waitress seems startled by him — it’s his face, he assumes — and that’s when she intentionally spilled his cup of coffee down his suit.
• The waitress behind the counter was recently mugged after her morning shift at the diner. The man said he had a gun, though she never saw it, and he promised he’d be back if she called the police. Nevertheless, she phoned 911 that night as soon as she could find a phone. She’s a bit on edge, and she’s recently been seeing a therapist for it. The man at the counter is making her nervous, though he seems nice enough. He said please and thank you when he ordered his coffee. If she can just get through the day, then she can go home to the safety of her apartment. “More coffee?” she asked him, holding out the pot, but when he leaned in to whisper something, she thought it could be HIM, the man who mugged her. Her arms grew weak. She dropped the coffee cup.
• The woman at the window is watching the people pass by on the street outside. She’s tired and waiting for her order of huevos rancheros. She notices the dis-figured man at the counter and doesn’t want to seem to stare. Suddenly, she looks up and hears them both yelling. All over a cup of spilled coffee. Some people just take things too seriously, she thinks.
As you can see, each of the above scenarios offers a particular angle of vision. The POV can be defined as the bias of the person telling the story. The history and background of the individual that is influencing the relaying of the story. The particular lens through which the story is told. What can that individual actually see? What is influencing him or her? What can’t be seen, and what’s left out?
The waitress believes the disfigured man at the counter was the man who robbed her. The disfigured man, in his state of hyperself-consciousness, believes the woman is looking at him in disgust and pity. The woman at the window, however, has missed much of the action. From her vantage point, she can see only certain things, and she might have missed the subtle exchange between the man and the waitress. Her response: What’s the big deal?
When selecting your POV character, you should ask yourself these questions:
• Whose POV is the most interesting? In the scenario above, I can tell you whose perspective is least interesting: the woman at the window, who barely notices the events unfolding.
• What is the POV character’s motivation for telling the story?
• What is your POV character’s relationship to the protagonist? Is he the protagonist?
• From what narrative distance is the POV character telling the story? That is, how much time has elapsed since the telling of the events? Think of the popular television show The Wonder Years. If you recall, that show was narrated by a man, grown well into his adult years, looking back with nostalgia at his childhood. This nostalgia certainly tempered his retelling of events. Atonement, too, is told from the narrative distance of decades as the protagonist, Briony, looks back with regret on the events that transpired in her early years. You should ask yourself what the perspective of time has done for the telling of the story.
• Who can be present at the most important (and climatic) moments in the novel, so as to narrate these events to the reader? This is a logistical decision, of course. If a character dies midway through your novel, he clearly cannot narrate the rest of the events — unless, of course, he does so from the grave. Spooky.
Keep in mind that your POV character does not need to be the protagonist of your novel (consider, again, Jay Gatsby/ Nick Carraway). In the case of Jay Gatsby — he might have been too convinced by his own lies and misrepresentations to be a very reliable narrator.
Assignment
The goal of this exercise is to demonstrate that the choices you make about point of view will affect how your story is told. First, select three characters from your character bios and put them in a short (no longer than three pages) scene together. In this scene, at least one of your characters should discover something that will change his or her life (either for the positive or the negative). Perhaps a character has discovered that he won $42,000 and a lifetime of free stays at the Hilton, Paris, on a nationally televised game show. While he’s overjoyed, another character might be envious or spiteful. Remember, you’ll be writing this scene multiple times, so consider the inner thoughts and motivations of each character.
In the first draft, write this scene from the perspective of character one. In the second draft, write this scene from the perspective of character two. In the third draft, write this scene from the perspective of character three. When you have completed each scene, I want you to write a paragraph of assessment. Which perspective did you find the most natural? Which perspective offers the most interesting vantage point? If you were starting your novel today, which of these three characters would you select to narrate it?
DAY 9: POV&V (Point of View and Voice)
Yesterday we learned a bit about how to select the best point of view (POV) character for your novel, and, hopefully, after several days of writing exercises, you’re getting closer to recognizing who that character should be. However, several other aspects of POV should also be taken into consideration when outlining and drafting your novel. (I know, I know: So much to think about, so little time!) After selecting your POV character, you must then decide which POV type is best for your work. Then, depending on which character you choose to narrate your work, and how, your narrative voice can be adjusted accordingly.
But first things first. Following is a brief primer on the main types of narration:
FIRST PERSON: Narrated from the perspective of “I.”
Example: I dropped the coffee on the customer because I was nervous; I thought he was the man who mugged me.
Consider the first line from Moby-Dick: “Call me Ish-mael.” Immediately, we know that this first-person narrator, kindly enough to allow us to call him by his first name, is going to walk us through the events of the story. While the first-person POV lends us an immediacy (readers often experience the events of the novel with the narrator as he participates in the story), usually, this perspective is limited to one person’s thoughts and observations.
A strength of the first-person narration can be found in the immediacy of the storytelling itself. The first-person narrator speaks directly to the reader without the third party of the author rearing her pesky head into the story. However, this perspective is also extremely limited. So, that is to say, because we are in the “head” of Ishmael in Moby-Dick, we cannot know the thoughts of other characters such as Captain Ahab, Starbuck, or Queequeg — unless they tell Ishmael directly, and he, in turn, tells us. (And unless they’re being perfectly honest with him about what they’re thinking.) Also, first person can, at times, be unreliable as narrators often hold a deep bias in relation to the story being told.
THIRD PERSON, LIMITED: Narrated from the perspective of “he” or “she.” This type of narration follows a single character from a slight distance and is privy to that single character’s thoughts and observations but not the thoughts and observations of others.
Example: She dropped the coffee on the disfigured man because she was nervous, thinking he was the man who mugged her.
Third person is probably the most popular narrative mode, and for good reason. This type of narration provides added flexibility when conveying a story to your reader. No longer are you limited to the eyewitness account of a single first-person narrator (ex: I saw her drop the coffee), but the narrator can objectively report the actions of the story (vis-à-vis the external actions of all characters) while at the same time having access to one character’s internal musings.
This type of POV also most closely approximates the way a reader interprets the real world. Unless we have telepathic or clairvoyant powers, we are not privy to the interior thoughts of those who surround us. (And thank goodness, I say! That’d be a mess.) Third person allows us to lose ourselves in the story, observing as we would in real life (he said what?!?!) the actions that unfold before us.
THIRD PERSON, OMNISCIENT: Also narrated from the perspective of “he” or “she.” However, with this type of narration, we can pop in and out of the heads of multiple characters. This is also known as godlike narration.
Example: She dropped the coffee on the man because she was nervous. She saw him leaning in to say something, and she had a feeling he was the mugger. What she didn’t know what that he felt betrayed when she looked at him with those eyes of pity. His heart had sunk into his chest, and he was struck with the idea that he’d never be loved.
In an omniscient narration, the reader knows the thoughts and observations of more than one character. And, additionally, this type of narration isn’t as constrained, for an omniscient narrator can jump back and forth in time and space, visit the “head” of one character, then show us what another is thinking. While this may be useful in creating a rich narrative — this is, after all, the prime POV mode for the Bible, epics such as The Lord of the Rings trilogy, and many nineteenth-century texts — switching POVs too frequently can cause confusion. And, more to the point, many modern-day readers don’t like to be told everything. There is such a thing as letting your reader know too much about what everyone thinks at every plot point that might ruin the magic of the story itself.
The narrative voice of your novel is going to greatly depend on the POV character and type of narration you decide upon, and these decisions should be made prior to writing a single word of your outline or a single sentence of your novel. The narrative voice can be loosely defined as the way your POV character’s personality is coming across the page. Think again about the lessons of dialogue we learned on Day 7. Each character has a distinctive way of speaking that is the sum of his personality, background, education, and experiences. These qualities, too, will come through when narrating the events of the story itself in the form of diction, cadence, sentence length, and style. Is your narrator confident and proud? Overly self-conscious and self-deprecating? Guilty and confessional? Dominating as a peacock?
Consider the first few lines from the iconic classic The Catcher in the Rye written by the late, great J.D. Salinger:
If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. In the first place, that stuff bores me, and in the second place, my parents would have about two hemorrhages apiece if I told anything pretty personal about them.
In these first sentences alone the voice of the novel’s pro-tagonist, Holden Caulfield, presents itself loud and clear. What kind of individual would use diction such as “David Copperfield kind of crap” and “my parents would have two hemorrhages”? Who would write in long, rambling, breathless sentences? This isn’t a young boy who is naive in the way youth often are; he’s jaded and cynical. In fact, he gives definition to the term teen angst.
Even though it may seem premature to consider the narrative voice of your yet-to-be-outlined novel, this consideration is so closely linked to how the story will be told, to the perspective, and to character, it’s impossible to develop your novel without some serious consideration.
Assignment
The goal of today’s assignment is to explore potential POV types and the effect they may have on your novel. In yesterday’s assignment, you were asked to write one scene from the perspective of three different characters. Today I want you to choose one of those scenes (perhaps the one you felt was the most interesting or compelling) and rewrite it from the first-person, third-person limited, and third-person-omniscient point of views. Then reread all your scenes and ask yourself which one feels the most natural.
Then select the character you will most likely use as your POV character. (Remember, until you begin to write your outline, your POV may change. For now, simply focus on the exploration and development of each exercise.) Write what might be the first scene of your novel using this character, selecting a POV type and focusing on developing the voice of the character. When you reread this exercise, you should decipher — through the style, diction, rhythm, and sentence structure — some personality traits of your character. Try integrating some of your learnings from previous exercises into this scene: How can you convey your character’s emotions? How can you engage this character in direct conversation with another character? Write freely, and don’t overthink it — you never know where your character might take you or what you might discover through the process.
DAY 10: Packing Enough Baggage
Perhaps you just want to get on with it — you want to write your novel, already, and here we are on Day 10 without even a working outline. Hold your horses, Nelly. Make like a yogi and practice the art of watchful waiting. Channel Mr. Miyagi. You still have plenty to consider, and remember: The work you do now will make the actual writing of the novel progress much faster and smoother.
You no doubt learned a great deal about your main players in the past several days, but before you get too deeply into writing your novel, you should make sure your characters are complex, interesting, and likable enough to sustain a novel. Perhaps no greater blow could be dealt to a novel than when a reader reports, “I just didn’t care about the characters.” I cannot emphasize enough how important your characters are to your novel, even if you are writing a plot-driven novel, such as an action novel or a crime drama. Without interesting characters, your reader will be left asking, “Who the heck cares?” (And they’ll answer: “Not me.”)
Character History
So, before you get too far into the process, don’t forget to pack! Your character’s baggage, that is. Let’s face it: We all have our baggage. Maybe Deak is still not over his wife’s affair in the months after their wedding. Or maybe the plane crash Candy was in as a child psychologically scarred her for life. Did Geeta’s absentee father give her “daddy issues” that sent her to seek comfort in the arms of men she meets out at bars? Uh-huh. You got that right.
Just as human beings are the sum of our histories and experiences, so, too, are our characters. You’ll need to know your character’s background, his childhood traumas, his likes and dislikes, and his fears. You’ve done some of this work already with your character bios — and this is all good work. But it takes more than a night’s worth of bio writing to create complex characters. You’ll have to know the experiences that have defined him — prior to the present time of your novel. For example, would Jody, a young professional whose twin brother died in a sledding accident when he was young, be more or less likely to become a professional skier? Would he be more or less likely to let his own children go sledding during the first snow? Would he be more or less likely to live somewhere snowy? Depending on his experiences and how they impacted him, the answers will vary.
Complex characters will carry a novel much further than simple, one-dimensional ones. With the exception of Forrest Gump, I can think of no single fictional protagonist who is not deeply complicated. (And Gump is complex in his own way — he’s a simple man, but with great ambitions. And he knows what love is.)
Take out the character bios you wrote for Day 2 and examine them for a moment. Which of the characters you’ve studied is the most complex? Which is the most likable or interesting? And, on the other side — who might not be compelling enough to write about? How has each been shaped by his or her experiences? In your assignments since Day 2, which characters do you find yourself writing the most about? Which ones keep returning to your mind while you’re not writing?
Character Appearance
Maybe your mother or father told you this when you were younger: “It’s what’s on the inside that counts.” Or maybe they said this: “Beauty is only skin deep.” What parents sometimes neglect to tell their children is that appearance — what’s on the outside — often reflects our personality, attitudes, and values. Looks do matter, at least from the standpoint of ascertaining, via judgment calls (which aren’t always right), what that individual might be like. For example, a man with long, stringy hair and a goatee will make an impression quite different from a man in a pressed suit and slicked-back hair. One might be found at a Phish show, the other in an executive suite. One might smoke marijuana and strum his guitar, while the other drinks a nightcap of Scotch while he watches ESPN. One might ride a bicycle to work, while the other drives a brand-new BMW. One might shop at Salvation Army, the other at Crate & Barrel.
What a character looks like, and even his body language, goes a long way toward showing the reader what a character is like. Does your character walk with a limp? Does he hunch his shoulders? Does your character move her lips stiffly, too embarrassed to show her teeth? You’ll need to start thinking about the physical features of your characters and what they tell the reader about your character’s interiority. If your character has dark, foreboding eyes, for instance, is this a sign of a more malevolent interior? Is this character innately bad? If your character has porcelain skin, does this mean she’s pure of heart? Or that she never played outdoor sports as a result of a hovering, over-protective mother who never left the house without three bottles of SPF 80?
Simply put, the point is this: Writers need to be aware of the choices we’re making as just that: choices. Sometimes in the fugue of writing we forget to stop and ponder just why we’re making the choices we are making. The way your character walks, speaks, dresses, and acts will all help make her leap off the page. (Unless your character is old and sickly, in which case she might hobble off the page. Or fall. But you get the point.)
Character Motive
All characters — and most certainly your central characters — must have motivation. They must want something. Romeo wants Juliet. The Count of Monte Cristo wants revenge. (Or an excellent, fattening sandwich.) But what does your protagonist want? Left with no desires and no motivation, your novel will become a desolate wasteland, and you’ll waste a good chunk of these next eighty days spinning your wheels.
Motivation forces your novel, and your characters, by extension, forward. It propels the plot. What does your character want most in this world, and how does this wanting affect how he reacts in particular situations? We’ve discussed this already, but it’s an important point to hammer home. Yearning generates plot.
However, it is in our human nature, most of the time, unless you are a narcissist or sociopath, to want what is best for our fellow humans. Certainly, we want what is best for our friends and loved ones. After spending so much time with your characters, well, they feel like loved ones. Thus, shouldn’t you want the best for them, too?
Not if you want a compelling story.
Take out a sticky note and write on it: Do not give (fill in the blank with your protagonist’s name) what he/she wants! Post this to your keyboard or to the bottom of your computer screen.
Character Likability/Plausibility
Two last points of consideration ask you to put yourself into the shoes of your reading audience. (You should always do this unconsciously, of course.) First, an audience must like your protagonist, even if he or she does some “bad” things. Overly perfect people come off the page as downright annoying, as are individuals who are preachy or know-it-alls. If your central character is, essentially, “good,” be sure to give him some flaws that make him seem more fully human.
I’m not suggesting your protagonists all be good guys — not at all. Scores of novels feature protagonists we would not want to invite to Thanksgiving dinner. Have you ever read a novel or seen a film when you were actually rooting for the protagonist — a “bad” guy, perhaps a criminal — to get away with some vile act? These bad guys had some redeeming qualities that attracted the reader in the first place. Think about Vladimir Nabokov’s novel Lolita, for example. In this novel, the protagonist, Humbert Humbert, a middle-aged pedophile, seduces and carries on a multistate whirlwind romance with the nubile — and very underage — Lolita. Yet, as the reader turns the pages, she becomes entranced with that idiosyncratic Humbert Humbert who, in his own way, is a bit of a romantic. And the reader can relate to that. If Humbert Humbert had no positive qualities, no charismatic traits — nothing to signal that he, too, is human — rest assured this book would have been pulled off the shelves as quickly as you can say Lo-Lee-Ta.
Finally, all characters must maintain a level of plausibility; that is, the way that character develops throughout the novel must be authentic to the way that individual would naturally develop. For example, if in chapter one your character is an egomaniacal man with a drug habit and a gambling addiction, it is unlikely he’ll decide to become a Catholic priest down the road in chapter ten, unless of course, he was doing it to get closer to some bingo halls.
Assignment
The goal of today’s writing is to further develop some of our main players, making sure they have the staying power and charisma required of a novel’s protagonist.
First, select a character who is likely to be your protagonist and allow yourself to freely write about him or her for a sustained period of at least thirty minutes to an hour. What does he look like? What is his history? What motivates him? In what ways is he a good guy with flaws or a bad guy with positive attributes? Allow yourself to more fully explore the complexity of this one character.
Next, write a scene introducing the above character as the central actor, paying particular attention to character history, complexity, motivation, and physical description. In this scene your character must want something but, of course, cannot have it. (Glance, if you must, at the sticky note you’ve stuck to your writing desk: Do not give the protagonist what he/she wants!)
DAY 11: The Art of Conflict
At this point, you should begin loosely considering how to shape the narrative arc of your novel — how your novel progresses from the beginning, to the middle, to the end. We’ll be discussing narrative arc in more detail later in this book, but for now, you should begin to think about how to divide your novel into parts. All good stories — movies and novels alike — evolve as the conflict within the story gets introduced, complicated, and resolved.
We can learn a lot about writing from the movies. A moviemarathon day might yield a total sum of four movies viewed, but reading four novels would take a week or more, at least. (Unless you’ve mastered the art of speed reading.)
According to famous screenplay writer and teacher Syd Field, there should be two major plot points in any given movie. Plot Point 1 should occur approximately one-third of the way through the film, and Plot Point 2, the climax, should happen approximately two-thirds of the way through the film. Plot Point 1 should deepen the complication for the characters introduced in the first section — compel them to action — while Plot Point 2 is the turning point — or rather the point of no return — for the characters.
So, in the movie Thelma and Louise, as Field highlights, Plot Point 1, approximately thirty minutes into the movie, occurs when Louise shoots and kills the man who is attempting to rape Thelma in the parking lot of the Silver Bullet nightclub. Now these characters are compelled to action. Now Thelma and Louise are no longer on a road trip; they’re on the run! And the viewer is running right along with them, breathlessly trying to keep up.
Although novels don’t behave exactly as movies do, Syd Field’s advice can be really useful to novelists and screen-writers alike. Conflict drives your novel, pushing it along at a pace that forces your reader to keep reading in order to catch up. Ask yourself: What is the first major complication your protagonist will face? What is the first conflict that compels the protagonist to action? What other conflicts will your protagonist have to go head-to-head with that will further complicate the plot? Are these external conflicts or more internal ones?
Human beings are complex creatures. Often, conflict arises from two competing desires at war within an individual. For instance, in Thelma and Louise, Louise was faced with a conflict at the moment she comes face-to-face with Thelma’s would-be rapist in the parking lot of the Silver Bullet: Be free from responsibility and constraints or punish the man who is attempting to rape her best friend (the result of which will absolutely embroil her within the constraints of the law, those chains that bind). We all know which path Louise chooses — and the ultimate outcome. (If you’ve not seen the movie, I won’t spoil it for you. But think car. Think cliff. Think pedal to the metal.)
Nonflict is the term I use to describe those incidents in your novel that are disguised as conflict. A nonflict, quite simply, is a tension that does not necessarily result in any action or reaction from your characters. A nonflict is yearning without action. A conflict drives the story forward; a nonflict does not. Nonflict keeps you spinning your wheels (a bit like the wheels on Louise’s convertible, right before it plunges off the cliff! Spoiler alert!).
Take a look at this example:
NONFLICT: I love my boyfriend so much. I mean, really, I love him so much it hurts.
CONFLICT: I love my boyfriend so much, but our parents forbid us from seeing each other due to an old family feud. (Romeo and Juliet)
CONFLICT: I love my boyfriend so much, but he is married to my sister. (Hannah and Her Sisters)
CONFLICT: I love my boyfriend so much, but he’s dead and having a difficult time trying to communicate with me from the afterlife because he’s forced to use an unreliable medium with a criminal record: Whoopi Goldberg. (Ghost)
Conflicts keep your plot and your novel moving ahead because your character will be faced with decisions and come head-to-head with situations that will force her to either act or react. Spend some time weeding out the nonflicts in your own work. Or make these nonflicts into conflicts by raising the stakes for your character. What is at risk for your character if he does not get what he wants? What stands to be lost or gained? And, importantly, why will this choice matter to your protagonist, and, by extension, to your reader?
Assignment
The goal of today’s assignment is to analyze the conflicts at work in your story. Are the stakes deep enough? Will these conflicts compel your characters to action? First, I want you to take a look at the synopsis you wrote for Day 3. Does your novel have, as Syd Field suggests, at least two major plot points, the first of which drives your character to action and the second of which is the turning point (or point of no return) for your character? Are the conflicts deep enough, important enough, or “big” enough to sustain the novel?
Now make a list of all the conflicts in your story. Can you locate any nonflicts, i.e., yearnings without action?
Finally, select the two biggest conflicts (what Syd Field would call Plot Point 1 and Plot Point 2, but what a novelist would term the rising conflict and the climax), and spend the rest of your time today writing each of these scenes. As your character deals with these conflicts, how does his personality/history/experiences/desires naturally cause him to act or react in this situation? Be sure to divide your time evenly between these scenes. As you get involved in a scene, it’s easy to be tempted to keep working on it. But remember, this is still the prewriting stage. Your goal is to simply explore your ideas to be sure your conflicts are able to sustain a novel.
Once you’ve finished, assess what you’ve written. What is at stake for your character if he or she doesn’t get what they want? How is the character changed by the conflict? Is the conflict internal or external? For now I’m only asking you to generally assess the conflicts in your story; however, you’ll want to soon begin thinking about the narrative arc: the beginning, middle, and end of your story.
DAY 12: Making the Most of Minor Characters
By now, your novelistic world is populating itself with some interesting characters, and hopefully you’ve honed in on who your protagonist(s) will be. You’ve spent hours thinking about plot, conflicts, setting, and motivations. You’ve written bios, lists, and a handful of scenes, some which may be used, others that may be discarded. In other words, you’ve done a lot of work toward developing the larger schematics of your novel.
But remember, love is in the details. It’s not too early to begin thinking about some of the finer details of the novel, and some of these details will come in the form of the minor characters who enter and exit your novel’s world, sometimes without much of a sound. Minor characters are just that — minor. They do not have much onstage time, and more often than not, they make cameo appearances. Think again about all the people you’ve come into contact with today. These characters all had minor influences on you during your day, even if their sole purpose was to pour you a cup of coffee at breakfast. But how did you react to the individual pouring coffee? Were you annoyed at the slow service? Did you help her clean up the coffee she spilled on your table? Sure, you may never see that waitress again, but your interaction did reveal a snapshot of your own personality.
You’ve spent a good deal of time creating fully round characters in the previous days, and you know, of course, that your protagonist must evolve as the novel unfolds. However, not all of your characters need to be fully rounded. It’s okay, in other words, for some of your characters to be flat or static characters; we don’t need to know all characters’ full histories, complexities, and desires. We don’t even necessarily need to know how they’ve been affected by the various conflicts at work in your novel. However, each member of your cast of minor characters has a deeper significance within the novel itself: Each minor character must have a particular purpose, one that reveals some fundamental element about your main players.
Let’s revisit our faithful example of The Great Gatsby. As you know, the main players were Jay Gatsby, Daisy, Tom Buchanan, and Nick Carraway, who is narrating the events of the story through his own eyes. Who are some of the minor characters, then? Think of Myrtle Wilson, Tom Buchanan’s lover, or George Wilson, Myrtle’s father. Think of Pammy, the daughter of Daisy and Tom. Think also of Meyer Wolfshiem, one of Gatsby’s seedy old friends. Or Jordan Baker, Nick’s sometime girlfriend. There are plenty of others, too. An entire cast of characters you may not have even considered, and some have larger roles than others. For instance, Myrtle is pivotal to the story’s ending, though she’s only ever granted a handful of scenes. Jordan Baker shows up for a few scenes, while poor, overlooked Pammy only graces the pages of the book for a few sentences. Blink and you might miss her. (And I’d be willing to wager a bet that many of you who read The Great Gatsby a while ago forgot that Tom and Daisy even had a child.)
Regardless of the length of the stay, each of these minor characters functions specifically to reveal some personality trait or character aspect of a main player. Take, for instance, Pammy Buchanan, who is brought into her mother’s luncheon to curtsy in her dress before Gatsby, Nick, and Jordan. During the brief visit, Daisy admits she only wanted to show off her daughter (a bit like a prized doll, one might imagine). And before we can say Go East Egg, she is rushed out of the scene by her nurse, the woman who usually cares for her. What does this brief encounter tell us about Daisy? How does Gatsby react? Does it reveal Daisy’s innate nurturing and motherly instincts? Does it show Gatsby’s affection toward the offspring of his eternal flame? Of course not; she’s about as interested in her daughter as a flea is interested in a hairless guinea pig, which is to say, not a lot.
As you continue working toward your outline, begin to consider which minor characters might take the stage. It’s a good idea to have at least some idea of their history, appearance, and personality, but it’s essential to know their purpose within the confines of the novel. What will they reveal about the protagonist?
Assignment
The goal of the following assignment is to develop some of your minor characters. As your story line evolves, you’ll likely find a need to expand your cast.
First, using the worksheet on page 107, come up with bios for at least ten potential minor characters. What kind of individuals will your protagonist encounter throughout the pages of the novel? You may want to consider relatives of your characters, coworkers, or classmates. Or you may wish to think about the various scene settings and the kind of people who might populate this scenery. For instance, if one scene is set in a park, will there be a hot-dog vendor? A street performer?
Next, spend the rest of your time writing several short scenes that involve minor characters. In what ways will these individuals react? How is your reader given a clearer picture about your protagonist? Remember, you can reveal much about your minor characters in a short space of time if you pay particular attention to details of appearance and/or how the characters carry themselves.
DAY 13: Scene or Summary, or, Taking the Dull Parts Out
Have you ever watched a movie or read a book that just felt, well, disjointed? Perhaps you felt it jumped from scene to scene, which confused you or maybe just annoyed you. This happens a lot in soap operas. Lauren and Jason are about to kiss when the scene cuts out, and suddenly you’re in a darkened back alley with two thugs who are kidnapping Victor. Yikes!
Or maybe you are the type to get impatient when scenes are overly slow and long. “Do we really need all these details?” you might ask yourself as you flip pages, skimming to get to the “good stuff.”
We’ve been writing in scene since Day 3 — and we’ll tackle the writing of your novel scene by scene — because a novel is simply a series of scenes strung together. However, without the necessary transitions and narrative summary, your novel is going to feel either like a.) a compilation of scenes and not a cohesive novel; or b.) an overly detailed story with a slow pace.
Narrative summary — which is essentially when the narrator summarizes some of the events of the story for the reader, without showing the scene directly — can serve two main purposes:
1. Orient your reader to changes in time, location, or point of view at the beginning of a scene.
2. Summarize what has happened so you can cut irrelevant, uninteresting, or unnecessary information.
The first purpose above is easy to understand; either between scenes or, more likely, as you begin each new scene, you’re going to have to redirect your reader to changes that have taken place. If time has leapt forward, how much time? If you’ve changed locations, where is the reader now? If the POV character has flipped, how can you immediately alert your reader to this? That is, you don’t have to show, in scene, how your character got from the end of chapter one to the beginning of chapter two by first, getting in a car, driving to the ferry, riding a ferry across the river, hopping in a taxi, and then walking the rest of the way. But you will have to make clear to the reader that these changes took place.
Alfred Hitchcock once wisely noted, “Drama is life with the dull parts taken out of it.” If you’ve ever watched the hit television show 24, have you noticed you never see the terrorist-fighting government agent, Jack Bauer, hit the john or retie his shoes or even eat three square meals a day? Of course not. There are too many other important things for Jack to be doing (for example, saving the world from nuclear bombs), and watching Jack tie his shoe would only serve to slow down the pace of the fast-action television show. The same holds true for our fictional worlds. If you find your story has “dull parts,” you can simply choose to narrate these uneventful unfoldings in summary form. Narrative summary is like a black hole for dull parts, if you want to think of it that way.
Consider this brief moment from the start of a chapter in Michael Cunningham’s The Hours: “She looks at the clock on the table. Almost two hours have passed….She takes a sip of cold coffee, and allows herself to read what she’s written so far.” Here, the author starts in scene: A fictional Virginia Woolf looks at the clock. Reads straight-forward enough. But then Cunningham shifts to a line of summary: “Almost two hours have passed.” Then, back to scene: Mrs. Woolf’s coffee has gone cold.
Why did the author of this passage choose not to narrate the entire two hours that passed? Why weren’t those two hours, hours Virginia Woolf spent in a writerly fugue state, put in scene, too? Consider Occam’s razor: The simplest answer is usually the right one. Not much happened in those two hours worthy of narrating in a scene. Perhaps Mrs. Woolf refilled her inkwell or walked across the room to retrieve some more paper. Maybe she got a piece of lint in her eye, or heard her stomach growling. Did she ever have to get up to visit the “little ladies’ room”? Maybe. But it’s not important. Cunningham both alerts the reader to a time shift and cuts out the dull stuff by simply summarizing.
A masterful use of scene and narrative summary can really help you gain control of the pacing of your novel, too. Use summary when you want to speed up your narrative and scene when you want to slow down your story. And here, again, we can take a lesson from the movies. Directors provide more detail when they want to emphasize the importance of a scene — or make time appear to elapse more slowly. For example, think of Hilary Swank’s final boxing scene in Million Dollar Baby. The viewer sees close-ups of the boxers, the sweat on Maggie’s brow as she sizes up her opponent, the slow trickle of blood down her face, and the way her head hits the floor when she takes her final fall. This is an important moment, after all. Maggie’s boxing career is ending before our eyes — so the director wants to draw attention to it.
Keep in mind that it’s crucial to put your novel’s most important moments in a scene to slow down time for your reader and detail crucial elements of your story; however, summary is useful, too, to quicken the pace and move forward in time. If scenes are the building blocks of your novel, summary is the glue that holds these blocks together.
Consider this example:
When Luke shined his flashlight down to the bottom of the well, he could make out a body. The person’s frame was small, so at first he thought it was a child or a teenager, but upon looking closer, he could see it was a woman. Her legs were bent at an awkward angle.
“Hello down there?” Luke called. He could hear his voice echo off the stone walls of the well. “Hello?” At first he heard nothing, but then a slow moan rose like smoke out of the well.
Luke knew he had to act fast. He put his flashlight down and turned to walk back to his blue Toyota pickup truck. He rifled in his pockets and found the silver key. When he turned the ignition, it started up smooth and easy. He backed out of the dirt parking lot and turned left on Round Bottom Road. He knew the police station was just about seven miles up on the right because he’d passed it on the way here. It would take fifteen minutes to get there. The trees were just turning red and orange all around him, so it looked like an explosion of color out of the corner of his eyes. Finally, he saw the police station, and he turned on his signal, eased his foot on the break, and made his turn. He wondered if that woman would be okay.
The above example begins in a scene: Luke is standing at a well when he discovers a body down below. However, the entire final paragraph could easily be provided in a quick summary in order to speed up the pace of the novel. What about: “Luke knew he had to act fast, so he rushed to his car and sped down the road to the police station.” By providing summary, you avoid taking your reader through the sometimes tedious details that aren’t necessary to your story. Plus, if Luke knew he had to act fast, would he really be noticing the autumn leaves on the trees? Not likely.
Assignment
The goal of today’s writing is to practice using narrative summary within a scene. But, first, return to one of the scenes you wrote for either Day 10 or Day 11. Reread this scene and assess where you either are using or could use narrative summary. You might find it useful to print this scene and highlight with a marker. Next, ask yourself which details are not necessary to the scene — which details could you put in summary?
Now I’d like you to write the scene you imagine could follow this scene, chronologically, in your novel. However, I want you to either move forward significantly in time or change the setting in this new scene. Begin this scene with narrative summary before launching into the scene itself. Switch from narrative summary to scene narration at least twice in this section. Pay careful attention to what information can be summarized and what information should definitely be narrated in scene.
DAY 14: Act One: The First Cluster of Scenes
Today is the first day of the rest of your novel. Not that the work that’s come before wasn’t important. But today I want to focus on shaping your novel’s timeline of events so you can begin the necessary steps toward outlining your novel. And, as you know, outlining will be an invaluable tool toward helping you conquer the ninety-day novel challenge. In such a short space of time, we don’t have many days to waste! Hop to it.
As you know by now, you should be able to divide your novel, loosely, into three parts: a beginning, a middle, and an end. Some writers like to think of these as acts or as parts or as clusters. It’s a fairly traditional model, and an excellent one for first-time novel writers. Essentially, each act is comprised of a series of scenes, and this cluster maintains a specific function within the arc of your novel. We’ll be taking on the arc of your novel in further detail in a couple of weeks, but for now I want you to gain a general understanding of what each act of your novel can and should do.
But, first: Have you ever watched one of those incredibly cheesy reality dating shows, such as The Bachelor? I wouldn’t recommend it. However, believe it or not, a show such as this one might provide us with some insights regarding Act One of your novel. In the first episode or so, the Bachelor is introduced to all the women who will be competing for his love. We learn about their histories and back-stories; we learn about the bachelor himself, his trouble finding love, his hope that he’ll meet his soul mate through the gonzo, accelerated journey created by reality television.
In the first episodes, the viewer is provided with introductions, stories, and brief interviews, and, as a result, we become invested in the contestants. We find ourselves rooting for Danica, from Nebraska, because she seems genuine and sweet, and we find ourselves rooting against Portia because she looks rather promiscuous in that emerald-green satin dress. Plus, she says “like” too much and is catty toward the other women.
We know that a main “plot point” of the bachelor will be the selecting of one (lucky?) bachelorette to ostensibly spend his life with in matrimony. In other words, the first episode or two is simply setup for the rest of the television series.
Act One of your novel, too, should serve as an introduction of your main characters, the “significant” or “starting point” event of your novel, and the overt or latent conflicts. By the end of Act One, the reader should know what drives your character: What is his history? What are his desires and motivation? Most importantly, what does your character want within the confines of this novel? In other words, what is at stake for your character in your novelistic world? What does he stand to gain if he attains his goals, and what will happen if he loses? Think about Romeo and Juliet. What Romeo wants most is Juliet. What is at stake if he can’t have her? A colorless life, not worth living — so we learn toward the play’s end.
By the end of the first act, your protagonist should be forced, coerced, or otherwise propelled to action; he must respond to the events that are unfolding before him.
In general, by the end of Act One, you should be able to answer these questions:
• What is the “significant event” of the novel?
• What is your character’s motivation? What is at stake for her?
• Have you included enough scenes that provide the history and background for your character? In other words, have you developed your character enough in the first scenes for your reader to feel invested in her?
• Do you include scenes that either overtly show or hint at the challenges your character will face?
• Is the first third of your novel interesting enough to engage your reader and compel him to continue turning pages?
Often, when authors query editors or agents, they are asked to send only the first fifty or so pages. The logic here is that if the first fifty pages don’t sustain the attention of a reader, the second hundred and fifty pages likely won’t either.
Assignment
The goal of today’s work is to begin brainstorming some likely plot points and scenes for inclusion in the first third of your novel/novel outline.
First, I want you to come up with a list of twenty first lines of your novel. Each should be different, and each should immediately grab the attention of your reader. A first line that reveals conflict or tension immediately is often a good lead in to your story. Don’t focus too much on perfection at this point: Just brainstorm the various (and interesting) ways you can enter your story.
Next, write a list of at least five different scenes (and their summaries) that may be included in the first act. You may wish to review the questions above when you draw up this list of scenes.
Finally, write at least one of the scenes from your list above. We’re not quite to the outline yet — so feel free to explore this character and this scene to see where it will take you.
DAY 15: Act Two: The Second Cluster of Scenes
Let’s continue exploring The Bachelor again, for the sake of our learning. (And not for the sake of guilty-pleasure television consumption.) The “middle” episodes are really the heart and backbone of the series. These episodes include the drama, the tears, the pleading, and the backstabbing; in other words, these episodes include the conflict. We learn that the bachelor and Kelcey kissed in the hot tub, but then he learned that Kelcey had a boyfriend back home. Danica reveals that she is actually a mother of a one-month-old son, whom she left at home to come on the show in hopes of pursuing her Hollywood dreams. In essence, Act Two is your story.
In Act Two, you’re going to have to put your characters into some hot water (the metaphorical kind, not the literal kind that the bachelor and Kelcey were splashing around in). You’re going to have to create conflict and increase the yearning of your characters. Act Two of your novel is the realm of conflict. This portion of your novel should be dedicated to deepening the conflict and heightening the drama; it should be where “bad things happen” to your characters, even to your good characters, and especially to characters you like. Remember, yearning drives plot. Conflict, conflict, conflict. This may be difficult for some of us who, in our real lives (i.e., away from the writing table), are conflict adverse. We strive to stay out of trouble and to make decisions to bring us as close as possible to our desired outcomes. We are nonconfrontational, unless seriously provoked. And in this particular way, fiction does not mirror real life. In fiction we work to create tension; in life we strive to ease it.
By the end of Act Two, you should be able to answer these questions:
• Where have you deepened the drama?
• Where have you added complications for your protagonist?
• How are my character’s motivations, desires, and values causing him to react to events and situations in a way particular to him?
• How is my character changing? How is he affected by the events unfolding before him?
• What is the climax of my novel? The key moment for my protagonist’s understanding of self?
Assignment
The goal of today is to begin envisioning the middle section of your novel. Hopefully by now you’re beginning to see how your novel might be shaped with character, plot, and conflict. You’ve spent two weeks developing your story and brainstorming methods for deepening the conflict and heightening the drama.
First, take out a piece of paper and draw a timeline of events that have taken place in Act One through Act Two. This time-line need not be fancy — a simple straight line with tick marks will do. Plot all the points you’ve listed in yesterday’s exercise and continue plotting points until you run out of ideas.
Next, come up with a synopsis of Act Two, using the time-line you just drew. You can either write this synopsis in paragraph form, or you may wish to bullet point a list of scenes, along with their respective summaries. Consider where you ended your list of scenes yesterday. What steps will your character have to take in order to get from point A (the end of Act One) to point B (the climax)? Try your best to imagine each scene individually.
Next, write one of these scenes. Try not to be too rigid in your expectations of the scene. Instead let it naturally evolve and see to which interesting places it might take you.
DAY 16: Act Three: The Final Cluster of Scenes
The bachelor has once again found himself in a mess. He’s developed real feelings for Danica and Portia. And in a surprise twist, Kelcey really opened up to him about her history and her feelings during their alone time, and now he’s torn between three women.
The final episodes, however, find the bachelor resolving the complications that have faced him. He realizes he needs someone who will be both his best friend and his soul mate. He realizes he wants someone who will get along with his family, not just someone who will canoodle with him in the hot tub. He’s changed, the show leads us to believe, and while he was flighty before (he has, after all dated twenty-five women in six weeks!), now he knows exactly who he wants to spend his life with. The journey, his journey, our journey, frankly, has come to the journey’s end. And the final rose goes to…
In the final third of your novel, you should be working toward resolving the conflicts and problems your character faced in Act Two of your novel. In this final section, we learn the consequences for your character. He could either:
a.) Get what he wants.
b.) Not get what he wants.
c.) Get what he wants but realize it is no longer important to him.
d.) Not get what he wants, but get something that is even better than what he wanted in the first place.
The threads of your plot must come together in the final scenes, and you’ll need to tie up any loose ends. Ultimately, we’ll need to know how your character changed from the beginning of the novel to the end.
By the end of the final act, you should be able to answer the following:
• How has my character changed since the start of the novel?
• Have I resolved all plot points?
• What has my character learned? What were the consequences of the novel?
• What does my character want for the future? (Beyond the novel’s pages, even?)
• Is my final scene strong enough? Poignant enough?
Assignment
Today’s goal will be to begin thinking about what kind of scenes will be involved in the final act of your novel.
First, return to your timeline from yesterday and continue filling in the plot points. Then come up with a synopsis of Act Three, using the timeline you just drew. You can either write this synopsis in paragraph form, or you may wish to bullet point a list of scenes, along with their respective summaries. Consider where you ended your list of scenes yesterday. What steps will your character need to take in order to get from point A (the end of Act Two) to point B (the final resolution)? What kind of ending do you imagine for your novel? Try your best to imagine each scene individually.
Next, write twenty novel-ending lines. This is the last line the reader reads (obviously), so it needs to be a good one and encapsulate the final tone of the novel.
Finally, write one of the scenes from Act Three. Try not to have too many expectations of the scene. In other words, as you are writing, you may discover that in the end, the character does not get what he wants after all.
DAY 17: Flashing Backward, Looking Forward
For the past two weeks, you’ve done a lot of thinking and writing toward the characters, plot, setting, and conflicts of your novel. The past few days, we began addressing the fundamentals of the arc of your story. However, as you’re well aware, some of the necessary scenes and information will have already taken place prior to the “present” of your novel, or where your novel actually starts.
Each novel is narrated from a specific point in time, from point A to point B. In the case of The Great Gatsby, the present time of the narrative is from Jay Gatsby’s arrival into West Egg until shortly after his untimely death several months later. However, this book also affords us several glimpses into the past — into events that happened before the novel’s narrated time began. And this backstory, as you know by now, will become vital to the progressing events of the novel. After all, it is Gatsby’s unfaltering love (or is it an obsession?) for Daisy, their past love connection back in Louisville, Kentucky, that drives his unrelenting quest to buy … er, win … Daisy’s love again. We have to know a bit about the past in order for the events of the novel to fully resonate with the reader.
Most novels will likely find themselves flashing back to an earlier time to reveal aspects of a character’s history or experiences. But before you get flashback slaphappy, you should learn some key rules:
1. Once you’ve decided on a starting point for your novel’s narration, you should do your best to maintain narrating the present story.
2. Flashing back too often or for too long can confuse your reader. If you find the need to continually flash-back to explain your character’s behaviors or desires, your story should probably begin earlier. For example, if you find your protagonist, Zane, was deeply affected by his time in war, and you keep flashing back to scenes of battle, maybe you should simply start the novel with Zane hunkered down in a bunker, fighting off enemy fire.
3. You often can use narrative summary, instead of an entire scene, to convey the necessary backstory. Executed artfully, a reader won’t realize that she is being shifted back and forth in time. Consider this example:
Leonard felt his fingers go cold and his face grow hot. He couldn’t believe Tapanga’s words as she said good-bye. He felt like he had a rock lodged in his throat. He thought back to what his mother had told him over and over as a child, sometimes screaming in his face when he did something wrong: No one will ever love you. You are unlovable. Deflated now, Leonard thought that maybe his mother was right.
In this brief snippet of a flashback, we sense the connection of the past to the emotions of the present. In other words, we know Leonard feels so emotionally fragile in the present moment because of the quick snapshot of his abusive mother. However, this flash-back was brief and quick, keeping the reader’s attention focused on the story being narrated.
Flashing back can be extraordinarily useful when conveying emotions or trying to explain the actions, motivations, or desires of your characters. However, flashing back too often can feel disorienting and unnecessary. You’ll want to use flashback economically, so make every memory a significant one.
Assignment
The goal of today’s assignment is to practice using flashback within your scenes. First, I’d like to write a stand-alone scene of flashback from the point of view of your protagonist that takes place prior to any events of your novel. Perhaps this scene of flashback could take place in the protagonist’s childhood or young adult years. Put this scene away. Next, write a scene in the “present moment” of your novel, trying your best to incorporate, from memory, the important details from the flashback scene you just wrote. The trick will be to include the flashback without having it overwhelm the present scene.
Next, select two to three scenes you’ve already written for a previous exercise. Revise these scenes, adding sentences or paragraphs of flashback to deepen emotions or explain the motivations of your character.
DAY 18: Don’t Be Tone-Deaf
Tone can be a tricky concept to discuss because it doesn’t involve any concrete element of fiction, per se. In effect, the tone of your novel, or of an individual scene within your novel, describes the mood it evokes, or the over-all feel. And just how do you talk about something you can feel, but you can’t see? Though difficult, it is possible. And perhaps this is why poets and musicians have spent hundreds of years exploring an intangible concept such as love.
One reason tone is a difficult concept to explore is because it comes from a variety of sources within your work. First, the tone will be part and parcel of the narrator or your POV character. What is his or her overall purpose in telling the novel? Is this story a coming-of-age novel? A mystery? A cathartic release of some sort? A romance? And how would you describe the temperament of your narrator? Is she nervous? Anxious? Moody? Uncertain? Pompous? Happy? Naive? Bombastic? Whoever is narrating the story, remember, will have the greatest impact on exactly how that story gets told.
Consider, briefly, the following example, taken from the first pages of Nabokov’s haunting novel, Lolita:
Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta. She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one stocking. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita.
In these few short sentences, the narrator Humbert Hum-bert not only describes young Lolita, but allows us a glimpse into the tone of the novel. In this passage, we know Lolita’s approximate height; we know she is a school-age girl; we know she is Humbert Humbert’s lover. Yet the way the narrator provides this description — particularly through his creepy repetition of her name — reveals his deep and abiding obsession with her. From the onset of this novel the reader knows this romance won’t be a normal one, and once dear Humbert Humbert’s age is revealed, the obsessive tone of the opening fits the character. Yet, there is a musicality and lightness to the tone, too — Lo, Lee, Ta, like the notes of a scale. And perhaps it is this lightness that convinces us, the readers, to continue reading such a sordid tale.
Tone also stems from other decisions that you, the writer, are making in terms of word choice, imagery, and setting. You might recall our explorations of settings a couple of weeks ago, wherein we discussed that the setting can be used to reveal the tone of the scene or the mood of the character. For example, you’ll find it much more difficult to evoke an ominous tone on a bright and crisp spring morning, as the sun is just peeking out of the sky. Imagery, too, will become essential toward conveying tone. For instance, chirping birds don’t necessarily convey a menacing tone. Unless, that is, the birds are numerous, black, and hyper-aggressive, as in Alfred Hitchcock’s film The Birds.
But filmmakers have an easier time conveying tone to their viewers. In films, tone is often set by the addition of a musical soundtrack. I’m sure you can recall the high-pitched, repetitive, screeching music in the American thriller classic Psycho. This chaotic music is directly related to the character in the scene — a knife-wielding maniac, Norman Bates.
Think for a moment of the novel you’re shaping so far — what kind of tone do you think you’ve created through-out? Before continuing, take a look at the last couple of scenes you’ve written. What one-word adjective would you use to describe the tone? If this scene were made into a film, which song do you think you’d use in the soundtrack? These questions might seem like simple ones, but if the tone of the scene does not match the content of the scene, the writing can feel a bit stilted.
More often than not, if you’re paying close attention to developing your characters and, as result, your voice, the tone of your scene will naturally evolve. However, it’s crucial you keep tone in mind as you’re making some crucial choices about diction, imagery, and setting. How do you want your characters to feel?
Assignment
The goal of this assignment is to explore in further depth the tone of your novel and how it is affected by character, imagery, and word choice.
To warm up, I want you to simply brainstorm a list of words — adjectives, nouns, and verbs — that you associate with the following descriptors. Really stretch your imagination as you try to come up with as many associative words as possible to tonally convey the feeling evoked when you hear these expressions.
Ominous
Upbeat
Quirky
Manipulative
Mysterious
Obsessive
Next, select a scene, any scene, that you’ve written in the last two weeks, and print it out. I’d like you to assess the tone of this scene by circling any word that is evocative of the tone. Highlight any images or description of setting that work toward conveying tone, and then write at the bottom of the page a three-sentence description of the scene’s tone and how it relates to the POV character and his mind-set. Next, select a song for the “soundtrack” of this scene. (That is, if this scene were made into a movie, which song would fit better — “Don’t Stop Believin’ ” or “Endless Love”?
Finally, write two short scenes involving your main protagonist “discovering” something, each with a different intentional tone. So, for instance, if the tone in one scene is light (as the protagonist finds a winning lottery ticket), the other could be dark (as he discovers that his father illegally rigged the lotto numbers and killed a lottery representative in the process). In each, use at least one symbolic image to represent the tone of the scene (think of Hitchcock’s The Birds).
DAY 19: Novel Synopsis, the Preblueprint
You are three writing days away from completing a sturdy outline of your novel, and you should be proud of yourself. It takes faith in your ideas, patience, and, well, a little bit of guts to spend nearly three weeks developing and prewriting your novel. But the reward will be worth it. When you finally start the linear writing of your novel, the process will go much more smoothly if you have the blueprint in hand. But let’s face it, it’ll still be work.
Unlike many of the other days’ assignments, today we won’t focus on a specific element of fiction writing; instead we’ll focus on drawing up a detailed synopsis of your novel. Novelists who query agents and editors will likely find they are asked to first submit a synopsis of their work. Based on whether or not the agent found the synopsis compelling and well written, you’ll be asked to send in a copy of your manuscript.
Writing a synopsis is useful for several reasons. First, it allows you to put down on paper (or computer screen) the plot of your novel in paragraph form, along with other necessary details of character, conflict, and setting. A synopsis is an excellent way for you to organize your thoughts, plot points, and story line prior to writing your outline.
A good synopsis should mimic the voice and tone of your novel. One of the biggest mistakes writers make when crafting a synopsis is creating one that’s boring. Your novel is complex, intricate, and narrated using a particular voice, as your synopsis should be. If your novel is exciting, your synopsis should be, too. If your novel is fast paced, ditto your synopsis. If your novel is a slow-moving intricate portrait of the interior life of your character, yep, your synopsis should reflect this.
Your synopsis should also contain the right amount of backstory to properly orient your reader. What does your reader need to know about your protagonist before he or she is able to understand the context of the story? In writing the synopsis, you’ll need to be mindful of your reader every step of the way. You, the author, will be telling a story: the story of your novel. What’s the best way to hook your reader? What details can you reveal that are interesting, intriguing, or compelling? Remember, sometimes your synopsis is the only shot you’ve got at convincing an agent or editor to review your work.
The shape, or arc, of your synopsis, too, should mimic your novel. You’ll want to add the necessary details to introduce your character; you’ll need to include the motivations and yearnings of your protagonist; you’ll have to include the necessary details surrounding the climax scene — the most important moment in your novel’s story line, and certainly a defining moment of decision and/or clarity for your character — and why it’s crucial to your story. And, finally, although it might feel counterintuitive to “give away” the ending of your story, you’ll need to explain how your story gets resolved.
You may know some of these things already — or you may not. But as you’re writing your synopsis, you should fill in as many of the fine details as you can. Your synopsis, if fully drawn, will assist you enormously in the production of your outline, which will be our next task.
Assignment
Today’s assignment is straightforward, and if you’ve done your requisite writing assignments up to this point, you may find this assignment easier than expected. Write a synopsis of your novel, including as much detail as possible. Editors and agents often ask for a long synopsis of your novel, which can be anywhere from eight to ten pages. What are the most important details that a blind reader would need to know about your story? What minor details can you leave out? What backstory will you need to give your reader so as to orient him?
DAYS 20 AND 21: Ladies and Gentlemen ... the OUTLINE!
Congratulations! If you’ve come this far in your ninety-day novel challenge, you should be extraordinarily pleased with yourself. Heck, you should throw a party (but maybe just a small one where you are the only person in attendance.) You’ve come a long way in nearly three weeks: You’ve spent a couple of hours a day doing something you always wanted to do: working on a novel. Of course, this is only the beginning of the process. (Thus, the small party intended only for yourself.)
What you’ve done so far is lay the groundwork for your novel’s blueprint. As discussed throughout this book, you’ll need a sturdy outline to be able to produce the necessary pages in the seventy days that remain. Your outline will ensure that you stay on task, that you’ve considered the conflicts and consequences for your characters, and that you’ve done some research on your characters’ histories or the time period in which your novel is set. I’d be willing to bet that your novel idea has morphed quite a bit from Day 1 to Day 19 when you wrote your synopsis. You’ve probably created characters you never would have considered, explored possible plotlines, and delved into pockets of your creativity you didn’t even know existed. Perhaps you began this challenge thinking you wanted to write about a World War II nurse, but now you’ve decided to write about the granddaughter of the nurse, who plays in a fledgling country band called the Florence Nightingales, a band that busks for money on the streets of downtown Tupelo. This, you think to yourself, is a much more compelling story to write. And if you’ve done the necessary exploratory and developmental work, you’re probably right.
Days 20 and 21 will be dedicated to constructing your outline, scene by scene, and, luckily, you’ve already accomplished much of the work. Consider the work you did on Days 14, 15, and 16, when you were asked to think about the three acts, or parts, of your novel. Consider also how you can break down the synopsis from Day 19 into compartments or scenes.
As you recall in a previous chapter on outlining techniques, it’s important to find the method that meshes best with your writing process. Do you tend to write by hand first and then type up what you’ve written? Do you type directly into a word-processing program? Are you one of the few, like fiction writer Richard Powers, who uses voice recognition software to dictate your work? If so, which outlining technique do you think will work best? Are you a more tactile learner? Would you benefit from a physical flowchart you could tape to the wall next to your desk?
Regardless of the style you choose, you’ll need to spend these next two days mapping out your novel, scene by scene. While this may seem like a tedious process — maybe you’ve been dreading these days all along! — the work you do now will save you valuable time and energy at a later date. And what will you do with all this saved time and energy? You’ll write, of course!
Assignment
Quickly skim through all your exercises from Day 1 through Day 19, paying particular attention to Days 14, 15, 16, and 19. Chances are that by this point you’ve already come up with most of the conceptual material for your book.
Now, you guessed it: Outline your novel, scene by scene, providing as much detail for each scene as possible. Be sure that you note, at a minimum, the setting, characters, and conflict/plot of each scene. You’ll also want to note how each scene is resolved, even if that resolution is a cliff-hanger. This assignment will likely take you a while to accomplish, and DO NOT SKIP THIS ASSIGNMENT under the false assumption that you’ve already done this developmental work in the synopsis and previous lessons. Breaking your novel into discrete scenes will prove absolutely crucial for later lessons as we work through your novel one scene at a time. Now get to work! You’ve got a novel to write, after all, and fewer than seventy days to do it!