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the characters will come from you, and their reactions, thoughts and feelings
will come from you.
And nobody can steal that.
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How to Start a Novel
You've decided you want to write a book. Terrific. Maybe you've even tried it
a few times, but haven't gotten one all the way to the finish line. It
happens. I had a slew of thirty-page novel starts before I finally found out
how to start a novel that I could finish.
See, that's the trick. You have to start the novel, but you have to have
planned to finish it before you type the first word on page one. And that
means laying some groundwork. What steps do you need to take to have the best
chance of finishing the book you're starting with such enthusiasm?
Here are a list of suggestions that will help you start the novel in such a
way that you can hope to reach the end.
RULES FOR STARTING OUT
"
Know your world
You might think that I'm off on the wrong track already that maybe this
first rule is sensible for people who are working on historical novels or
science fiction or round-the-world thrillers, but that it doesn't apply to
you.
After all, you're planning on writing a novel set in the town in which you
currently live, using thinly disguised versions of your friends and relatives
as the characters, so you don't need to research your background.
Yes, you do.
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In your town, which streets intersect lanes; in which direction do the house
numbers run; what kind of tree is that monstrous thing that grows in the
library's side yard; what are the five most common varieties of birds you'll
find around the bird feeder in January, or the birdbath in July? What is the
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family name on that elaborate tombstone that you notice every time you drive
to the grocery store? What color are the handles on the carts in your grocery
store, and if there's lettering on them, what does it say? Are the parking
spaces straight in or diagonal? Which families started the town, and are they
still in control of the place? What material has been used to pave the
streets? How old is the oldest house and where is it? Who built the projects
over on the east side?
I could ask a million questions like those they're the sort of questions I
always ask myself about any new world I'm creating. They are small, personal
questions, which when answered offer intimate knowledge of a place. That
intimate knowledge is what will make your book come to life
tiny, perfect details, mentioned so casually that you might not even realize
you have included them.
To get these details you have to look around your world with the eyes of a
stranger before you begin to write. You must become an innocent, asking silly
questions and being willing to make a fool of yourself. And this is true
whether you're using your home town or creating a complete world from scratch
on the fourth planet out from an alien sun. You have to name the flowers and
the trees and the grass, the streets and the houses and the stars, the animals
and the rivers and the clouds even if you don't intend to use these names,
or this knowledge. Even if you don't think you'll need it.
The act of learning these details will make them part of your thoughts, and
your mind will know they exist even if you don't put them on the page. And as
a result, the book you write will live within a whole world, and not in a
Hollywood set, where if you walked out in the front door of that beautiful
house, nothing would greet you but the parking lot behind the propped-up set.
"
Know your characters
.
Don't spend half an hour going through your baby name book to pick out a name
for your main character and call that character creation. You want to have a
feel for what your character would do in most situations (though if you've
created him well enough, one of these days you'll try to plug him into
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a scene and he'll look at you and say I'm not doing that
. ) And even while you're angry with him, you'll be thrilled that he's real
enough to stand up for himself.
And don't do a superb job of developing your main character and ignore
everyone else. At barest minimum, you should feel that you have intimate
knowledge of the two or three characters who take center stage in each of the
first three or for scenes you've planned .
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"
Know your conflict
.
This should be fairly obvious, but I overlooked it in most of those thirty-
page false starts. Conflict is the engine that drives any novel, and if you
try to write one without first making sure you have an engine, you're not
going to get far. Write out your conflict. (Or conflicts.) And don't go for
the big generalities. Gerri versus men, is a conflict, all right, but when
you're stuck on chapter five and you look at your notes for something that
will help you get back on track, something along the lines of Gerri's hatred
of her father drives her to take up with dependent men that she can then
abandon, and the man she has now abandoned intends to kill her might actually
aim you in the right direction again.
"
Embrace a theme
.
Know whether the story you are writing is about good versus evil, or about the
transcendence of love, or about anything that can go wrong going wrong. You'll
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