How to Write a Novel
After you read this blog post, you will know everything you need to write your own novel. It’s easy as that.
Okay, no that’s not true at all.
I don’t think there is any magic tip anyone can give you on how you can write a novel. But, I at least can give you all the information that helped me write my first and second novel, and hopefully, something will be of help to you!
Have a High Concept Idea
From my observations, I have noticed that people struggle to finish a book when they don’t already have an idea with elaborate conflict. I am not a plotter. For my first two books, I jotted a few things down in a notepad, threw caution to the wind, and just started writing, but I didn’t start writing the book until I knew what was going to make the book interesting and how it was going to be resolved.
Having a book idea about people falling in love or vampire or aliens is not enough to write a whole book. You have to have something to not only hold your reader’s interest but your interest while writing it.
I wouldn't freely say I’m good at a lot of things, but one thing I think I am good at is coming up with high-concept ideas in my head. I think this skill is owed to my fantastic ability to predict the ending of a book, movie, or play. If this isn’t something you are good at, have no fear. You are probably meant to be a plotter. Atlas, since I am not a plotter I cannot offer you much advice on that topic, but I know there is more than enough information out there to help!
Set Goals
There are two goals I am going to talk about, word-count goals and time goals.
The average novel is about 60,000-70,000 words depending on what genre you’re writing in. Most people don’t think about books in the sense of word count until you are actually writing a book, but authors and the people in the publishing industry are sticklers when it comes to this number. This is why I set my goals based on how many words I want to write per day. I don’t care how many chapters I accomplish, how many scenes I accomplish, or even if the words I write down are good, I just want to get my words down.
When I wrote A Girl Called Ruthless, I was really focused on getting 1,000 words down a day. To give you an example, that would take me about 30-minutes if I wrote uninterruptedly. My goals change constantly. Right now, I am working on writing for 15-minutes uninterrupted which usually leads to about 500 words per day.
I have found that either having daily/weekly word goals or writing sprint timelines work the best. It’s important when writing a novel to have small goals so that you feel like you are accomplishing something constantly.
Not only did I set daily goals, but I also set long-term goals. I knew that I wanted to pitch my book to agents and I even went ahead and booked that conference way ahead of time so I had something monetarily motivating me to meet my goal. This brings me to my next point…
Invest Monetarily in Your Writing
Think about working out. How likely are you to use the free gym in your community compared to the gym you are paying for every month? We want to make the most of our investments and that is why we stick to things that cost us something.
For me, I paid about $300 for a writing conference that involved pitching to agents, and I booked this while I was writing the novel. Did the money I pay for that conference actually pay off in the long run? Well, not really, but it did put a fire under my butt to write the book and my book did get picked up by a publisher only a few months later.
I probably will never pay $300 again for a conference but even with my latest WIP, I paid for something smaller to help me stay on my timeline. I also understand that people do not always have a lot of money to spend just to solely keep themselves motivated. Because of this, I started brainstorming on how I could help writers improve their writing and stay motivated while writing their novels. This is how I came up with The Publishing Rooms membership program.
For only $3.98 a month, members have access to live weekly teachings from experts in the industry, have a community of people they can use as critique partners, accountability partners, and cheerleaders, and they have access to all of the courses created in The Publishing Room. Also, starting November 1st, we will be hosting a Novel November Bootcamp to help people get their novels finished in the spirit of Nanowrimo. If you’re reading this after November, this is just an example of different boot camps, courses, and events that we will always be having for our members.
Okay off my little sales pitch, fewh. But no really, I didn’t just tell you all about my company’s new program just to sell you on it. I truly believe that investing your money into your writing is one of the best ways to gain motivation to move forward. Whether you decide to join my membership or decide to invest somewhere else, I truly believe it will be a huge push in the right direction.
Don’t Over-Think It!
We can be our own worst critics. This can be a good thing because it results in us putting our best work out there, but it can also be harmful to our process. You can always edit bad writing but you can’t edit nothing. Don’t overthink the novel-writing process. Just start writing, see what you get, and before you know it, you’ll have a living breathing book! Of course, it’s not that simple, but if you just keep writing and throw a small amount of caution to the wind, you might be surprised what you come up with.
