Novel Writing Tips (aka Hooray For Bob)

I thought I’d do a blog on how to write a novel, a sort of combo of all the resources that I’ve found online.

I’m presently about 70,000 words into a fiction novel with some agency contacts and a synopsis that changes more than my pants, and I’m sure, without work, bills, and a lack of direction character wise (I changed the lead when someone called them ‘unlikeable’) I would have finished it by now, so feel free to take advice from someone with a bit more clout in the writing world.

So in the past 4 months – what have I learnt about writing a book?

Here goes.

Don’t feel bad about catching ‘5 on it’.

Most blogs had all this stuff about sitting down at a proper desk and writing at 7 am sharp. I don’t think life’s that linear. I go to the gym some days in the morning. Sometimes work runs late. Friends want drinks and sometimes you’re just plain tired.

I think you should sit down when you can, try do 5 minutes- if it doesn’t work out, TV, relax, try the next day.

Opening the document is the hardest part.

You start wondering if you should clear out that cupboard. Wash those football boots. Or untangle your necklaces. This is the hardest part of writing. You need to just open up the document. Read the first chapter (I’m sure you will be sick to the gills of it) then something will happen. Somewhere!

Keep a document for all those loose ends

And I don’t mean what the books say about jotting down ‘a word, like ‘leaf’ ‘ – what use is the word leaf? It just confuses things and then you write a monologue about trees and forget to do the meat of the story. I mean the big chunks of dialogue you have to cut. The whole part about that big fight or the tussle with the shark. Take them out, name a word document ‘Later’ and use that.

Use notepad

Great for shuffling about dialogue and text- I like to grab a huge chunk of it – remember, some scenes can be about 3 pages long, and then I like to drop it in. I use notepad to remind me where I’m going. So, you need to take the shark scene out of chapter 7 and pop it in chapter 14 when he unexpectedly bursts into the seafront restaurant. I use notepad to write down surrounding phrases from Chapter 7 - jot them in the pad, and then once I’ve taken all the text and chucked it in chapter 15, I can get back to chapter 7 by using the search function.

Run characters through your family

As I said at the start – you don’t want to think your character is a loveable rogue when everyone else thinks he’s an idiot!

Skip the nonsense planning

Some blogs want you to list character X’s age, likes, dislikes and so on. I strongly disagree with this method of doing anything. Logic is for sums and Excel sheets, not a character. Sit down and write that Bob likes Cucumbers but hates Cats and all you have is a growing cliché. The dialogue should help you decide what Bob does or doesn’t like. When Fred gets off the train and Bob’s there to meet him- is he antsy? Or reading a paper? Or eyeing up young ladies? Or young men? Is he sweating or hopping up and down? Is he stuffing his face with pastries? Or is he eating apples like he always does?

And so on.

(In fact, I quite like Bob as a cheeky man eyeing up young men, hopping up and down with pastry crumbs on his blazer.)

Hooray for Bob!

Elaine @ Morethanakeyword