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Fiction Corner

Alison Hawke

Danger: Novel In Progress

Firstly, I'd like to thank all the people who emailed me after March's column, you were a real encouragement to me. I have great respect for anyone who's completed a book, let alone published the thing! Yes, I'm working on it, I promise... I am! I've decided to stick a prologue in. There doesn't seem to be another way to start. This is what happens when your main character loses her memory in the first chapter.

Donna J Werstler sent this piece of advice which I have followed already in part:

I kept a log of all my characters: their traits, qualities, general description and personalities. I even found magazine "pictures" of each so I could look at them and get to especially "know" my hero and heroine.

If I'd written down who liked which foods, I doubt I would have referred to one person's meal as a salad in one paragraph and a bowl of stew in the next. I think I have some character traits to record. The main characters need to be distinct from each other and that may be hard. They all have the same education, went through university together and work for the same company, albeit in separate departments. There's a little of me in all of them.

Donna would love to hear from other writers. If you send me an email with "For Donna" in the subject line, I'll pass it on to her.

Barbara L. Workman had this encouragement:

I'd like to say that each novel gets easier to write, but I haven't found that to be true. Each one is just as hard as the one before. This is just the way I work. I'm sure you'll hear from others who'll tell you they have to have an outline or they have to have the plot firmly in mind. Each writer has to use whatever works for him or her.

I have discovered I need an outline, partly because I think it's just too scary to dive into that much work all alone. Some people hate outlines, I think it's a personal taste issue. Mine is an evolving outline that's been through at least three major rewrites and a lot of red pen. I edit my writing a lot better if I have a printed copy of it, a nice mug of tea, a good supply of red pens and some decent music. So much for the "paperless office!"

There's a school of thought that says you shouldn't show an unfinished novel to anyone. I definitely wouldn't put my work in progress on the web for all to see, but an extra pair of eyes is very useful. An extra brain is extremely useful when it comes to generating ideas, especially if it's a brain that thinks around corners instead of straight lines.

I agree with John Dodd about outlines:

Writing a synopsis was odd, because I had only a loose idea of where the book was going (it's tightening up but I have no notion of how to end it or how to tie up the plot threads--yet). I found chatting with my wife and friends sparked ideas...they were all keen to know what I was writing and were good with suggestions on twists and turns that I hadn't thought of. One of these conversations prompted a major plot device which set me off at a run again. However, some authors are superstitious about discussing work in progress with friends, but I am not of that school. I found that I started writing the plot outline as I went on. In other words, I just sat down and wrote, with some idea of what I was trying to achieve, then tweaked the ideas in the developing plotline. The plot outline is a good ready reference, too, because writing at this length you might forget character names or situations or key scenes which are pivotal.

My husband has been invaluable in forming the plot skeleton by peppering me with more ideas than I could possibly use. I cannot recall all the major edits my outline has been through. A lot of background information is stored there too.

One of my favourite pieces of novel writing advice is about character names. I can't remember which book I read this in unfortunately, it could have been The Weekend Novelist by Robert J. Ray. The advice was simple: make sure all your main characters have names starting with different letters of the alphabet. One book I read had three main characters called Carrie, Kusac and Kaid, it was confusing trying to remember which K sound referred to which person.

So I'm off now to carry on scribbling out my novel. If you have any novel writing advice you'd like to share, please email me.