TBT #66: How to write a novel just like me

Look, I have very little time for you. I am writing a NOVEL. For real this time! I know I have said that before but I was not telling the truth; I was lying. Last year when I attempted National Novel Writing Month all I really did was write a bunch of unrelated stories about robots. Most of them were terrible. There was one about a robot who really wanted to have a penis. And I eventually ran out of stories about robots — because there is really only so much to say — and thus my novel went unfinished. This year, though, I have a real novel. Full of characters! And plots! I really think it might happen this time, guys.

I’ve currently written twelve thousand five hundred and ten words. Expressed as a number, that would like this: 12,510. At this point in November I am actually supposed to be at the 14,994 word mark. So, yeah, I’m behind, but I’m not THAT far behind. And I feel good enough about my work that I think I can make it to 50,000 before the month is out. That’s not to say I think what I have is GOOD. It is not good. But it is there, and that is the important thing.

Writing these twelve and a half thousand words over the last week and a bit has really caused me to think about my life as a writer. From my humbling beginnings writing post-apocalyptic rapture fiction in middle school to my heady high school days when I commanded an audience of e-friends who hung off my every word as I spun yarns about my trip to Niagara Falls where the lights were so pretty to my current incarnation as a less-popular misanthrope who just wants people to like his stories about sad people, I have covered a lot of ground. And with that comes a lot of knowledge! And a lot of angsty oh-god-I-am-not-good-enough-why-have-I-devoted-my-life-to-this whining. But mostly knowledge! And it is the knowledge that will be the focus of this week’s TBT.

In the article below I will seek to share my tips on writing a novel, much like the one I have written! I will be using REAL EXAMPLES from my novel so please do not steal my ideas or I will find a truck and get in that truck and turn on that truck and hit you. With what will I hit you? I will hit you with that truck.

Planning Your Novel

I am not a big proponent of planning. To me it is one of those new-age buzzwords like synergy or ethics that doesn’t mean much if you really think of it. We’re actually the only animal on earth that bothers to plan things, and where has it gotten us? The beaver, for example, doesn’t plan anything. It just wanders about and sort of lives for the moment. “Guess I’ll gnaw down that tree,” a beaver will think. And then after that he’ll gnaw down another one. And another. And then maybe he’ll put em all together and make himself a fort because what else is a beaver to do? Meanwhile, humans are planning. And what are we planning? Things like schemes! And wars! And Parenthood! None of these are particularly good things.

So that’s why when it comes to writing a novel, try to minimize your planning. Some people will tell you to sketch out outlines or character webs but these people are pussies who are too afraid to jump into the proverbial writing pool. “That pool is filled with snakes and chlorine!” they’ll say. But that is stupid because it is a metaphorical pool.

Do you know people use the term pre-planning now? Do you know what that is? It is planning to plan. It is planning how you will go about planning in the near future. This kind of thinking is what has doomed our generation to floating from educational institution to educational institution until we are 30, all in the hopes that we will avoid being a homeless person on the street. It is planning. But, see, the truth about the world is that we cannot all be tenure-track professors spending their weekends recording their musings about fourteenth-cenutury societal reaction to emerging artforms in Scotland. Some of us have to be homeless! And some of us have to work at Home Depot. Because some day I will need to buy siding for my house.

Really, the only planning you need to do is the very basic kind. There are four things you need before you start writing:

1. A plot
2. A Character
3. A setting
4. A style

That’s it. If you think about anything more than that you will doom yourself to pre-planning and never actually start writing!

Finding a Plot

Some people try too hard to think up elaborate high-concept plot. They want to make their mark with some elaborate metafiction that wraps itself in a layer of non-fiction but is, in actuality, entirely made up so much so that it makes some grand statement about reality. This all sounds very nice but you have to understand: that has been done. It is time we face up to the fact that all the really awesome stories have been told. I know this sounds defeatist but, really, it’s kind of true isn’t it? Think back to the great works of literature of our generation. Now take away all the ones where a young man is afraid of his own potential. Now take away all the ones about race and racism. Now take away all the ones about celebrity and consumerism and our desire for purity. Now, finally, remove everything about loss of innocence.

What do you have left? I don’t know. I don’t really read that much. Probably some stuff about space.

But regardless: do not try to be original. Being original is tacky. It just bothers people. Really, there is only one plot out there that we should use for our stories, and it goes like this:

something happens to a guy

Now, I know what you’re thinking: sometimes things happen to girls. And, you know, you are probably right. But for my purposes I am going to leave this as ‘guy’ and I will explain why later. So that’s it: something happens to a guy. That’s where you start. Then you have to think: hey, what could happen to a guy? The answer is: a lot! A lot could happen to a guy. That is one of my favourite things about the world today. Things are always happening to guys. It is hard to leave the house without something happening to a guy.

But don’t think about that too much. Just pick something. Pick anything. In my case, I went like this:

a guy goes blind

That is something that could happen to a guy, and thus is a good plot. Your own plots will likely be different — if they are not I will sue you — but the genesis should be the same. It is a natural evolution between something happening to a guy to this happened to a guy. And, after that, you have a plot. Congratulations, the worst is over!

Finding your characters

Okay, rule number one of character-building: if you are a white male, your main character is a white male. There is nothing worse than seeing a book in the bookstore with a title like “From Ghana to Tokyo: Confessions of an African Wife and Mother” and then you turn the book over and the picture on the back is some bald white guy with glasses and his biography reads “So-and-so grew up in Liverpool.” It just makes readers angry. It doesn’t matter HOW WELL you researched your plot and character, the bottom line will always be that you are NOT an African woman who moved from Ghana to Tokyo for some reason and also became a wife and, later (we assume) a mother. You are a British guy who probably lives in a castle with your butler. And the reader will never be able to get away from that.

So just pick something realistic. Which goes back to what I said above. If you are a woman, write about a woman. If you are a man, write about a man. The only realistic exception to this is if you are writing an animal story. But, even then, I recommend picking an animal that you can relate to. So, once again, if you are male, pick a male animal. Also, try to remember other factors governing realism. If you are a giant obese man, do not write your main character as a monkey swinging through the trees. People will be mad.

Okay, so your character is like you. Age is the one thing you can play with because age is easy. If you are writing a young person, make them naive and unsure about the road ahead! If you are writing an old man, make him full of regret and longing for days gone by. This applies to female characters as well, with the one exception that if you are writing an old black woman than she should be magic. All old black women are magic.

So you’ve got a character who is like you but maybe a different age. This is good. The last thing you need is a name. And here it is: your main character’s name is Bill. Or Steve. Or Jack or John. A lot of people will agonize over their names so that they can do something like James Joyce did with Stephen Daedaleus in Portrait of the Artist of a Young Man. He gave the character a meaningful name so that he would have something to write about. Everyone loved it! “Oh look,” they said, “his father made him wings! That’s a METAPHOR!” But honestly we don’t have time for that and your meaningful name will likely be something terrible like Jim Minotaur or Brian Ares.

I actually have a serious tip for naming, that I use often. Go to IMDb. Once there, enter the title of a favourite movie or — if you want to get cute — one that embodies the spirit of the story you wish to write. Click “Full Cast & Crew Credits” and scroll down to all the extraneous credits like Craft Services, Grip or Best Boy. If you see a name that jumps out at you, use it.

I am pretty sure you can’t get sued for this.

Congratulations, you have a PLOT and a CHARACTER. You are almost ready to write!

A setting

This is so easy compared to what you have just been through. A lot of people think setting is important but the truth is that it is not. You are just picking an initial setting. If you get bored with it mid-way through writing, just change it to another place! Seriously, it’s not like anyone is going to arrest you for doing that. You’re in control. You are God of this character who is doing something.

That said, there are only tree possible settings for a novel.

• The city you currently live in
• The place you grew up
• Outer Space

The first two are obvious. It goes back to my character argument. You can’t write what you don’t know. If I tried to write a novel about Pittsburgh, how would I go about doing that? I have never been to Pittsburgh. The only buildings I am aware of in Pittsburgh are their sports arenas. I guess I could look up details on Wikipedia but that would require research and, it would seem, research has been the one thing we have been trying to avoid throughout this article.

Here’s the bottom line on research: do very little research. You can do ‘research’ when you are rich and famous and want to go on tax-deductible trips. You do not do research when you are poor and starving and probably failing out of school because of an internet writing contest. That would be ridiculous.

So don’t do research. Set it some place you know really well! Or, if you hate that idea, set it in space. The great thing about space is that there are no rules. No one can come to you and say “Hey, that star system does not actually exist” because you could just smash that person’s face in and tell them it is an undiscovered and uncharted star system. And that person would walk away with their metaphorical tail tucked between their metaphorical legs (the person in this instance is a double-leg amputee).

Okay, so now you have your story which is either set in outer space or in your hometown and stars a character with an uncomplicated name who is just like you but perhaps older and younger. And something will happen to this person! Your novel is really taking shape!

Just one more thing.

A style

There are three basic ways to do prose: First Person, Second Person and — you guessed it — Third Person. We will cover Second Person only briefly because nobody ever really writes in Second Person except for the guys who write instruction manuals. It is generally a terrible way to write for several reasons. First, assuming your character is gendered you immediately alienate half your audience. Second-person novels that feature things like “You are standing at a urinal” or “Your bra strap digs into your shoulder” are not very conducive to readers of both genders. People get easily confused, and when reading are apt to say things aloud like “Wait, I do not WEAR a bra!”Second, it is just tacky. It makes the reader feel like they are doing things that they have never actually done. I read something like “You dodge the wizard’s deadly staff and strike him with your sword!” and I immediately think “There is no way I could do that; there is no way I could beat a wizard.”

So your choices are first person and third person and I am just going to make this easy for you: write in third person. That’s not to say there’s something wrong with first person, it actually has many advantages, the first of which is that it lets you bypass a lot of that “show, don’t tell” stuff. Where in first person you can show by writing something like “I was hungry when I went into the kitchen”, a line like ‘Bill was hungry when he went into the kitchen” would be an example of ‘telling’ in third person. You’d end up having to write “‘I am hungry,’ said Bill, entering the kitchen.’ Or perhaps “‘rrrr,’ rumbled Bill’s stomach, as he entered the kitchen.” This creates work for the writer.

But there’s a big advantage to third person writing that I have just discovered: you can write about ANYTHING. You are omniscient! So if you get bored with your main character, just create another one. Maybe he has a brother. Or a teacher. Or a wife! Or a long-lost son living far away. It does not matter, because if you are writing in the third person you can immediately shift the focus to them and keep on your merry way.

You may have noticed I only instructed you to create one character in the section on character above. This is because, as a person writing in the third person, you only need one character to start with. Just write about that character until you find yourself not knowing where to go with him, then create a new one. So while my initial plot was:

Halifax-native Jack Haskell is a guy going blind

It soon evolved into:

Halifax-native Jack Haskell and his wife, Helen, deal with his impending blindess

But then I needed even MORE, so I made it:

Halifax-native Jack Haskell, his wife Helen and their three children Ellie, James and Richard, deal with Jack’s impending blindness

But, really, 50,000 words is a lot, so as it stands the plot is now:

Halifax-native Jack Haskell; his wife Helen; their three children Ellie, James and Richard; Victoria Tate, a reporter; Jeanette, James’ girlfriend; Devon, Ellie’s husband; Taghrid, the deliciously ethnic target of Richard’s affections; and Anthony, the screwball neighbour guy who works at a comic store all deal with Jack’s impending blindness.

And I don’t even know if that will get me to 50,000! I may need more!

But the message is clear: it would be very hard to keep adding new characters with a first person narrative. Because the person doing the narration has to be there for most of the actions when they occur. Unless they are a psychic or perhaps a person with a teleportation device of some kind. So, yes, there are exceptions to this rule, but in considering those exceptions you have already wasted valuable writing time. So don’t consider; just write!

Conclusions

So now you have everything you need to write a novel fast. The last piece of advice I have for you — and remember I learned all of this last week so it may be totally wrong — is to not waste time describing things. Some people think the way to get to 50,000 is to pour on the description, but description is HARD. Like if I were to describe my chair right now the first word that would come to mind would be: chair. And you get that; you get that it is a chair. If I were to describe it, however, and by which I mean to come up with something like

the slight checkerboard back of the chair hung loosely off its backing like a towel on an exhibitionist walking down a dorm room hallway; the wheels of the chair were connected to a five-pronged base that came together in the middle like families at Christmas, together they support more weight than one would alone; when the chair slid across the hardwood floor it did so with rackety grace, getting where it needed to go, but not without making noise; an international super-spy with big red squeaking clown shoes

Do you really feel like you know the chair any better than you did before? It is a chair. You do not need all those words! Just write chair and move on with your life. Yes, on the short-term you will have less words than you would otherwise, but you will also find that your words come much easier, resulting in a net gain. And this, I have learned, is all that matters.

I hope you find this guide helpful. I am actually finding this whole experience far more valuable than I thought I would. I’d recommend it to anyone, regardless of your feelings on your own writing. It’s not a question of doing something that might be bought or sold or make people cry. It’s a question of doing something entirely for yourself. And it’s weird to think about, but, really, when was the last time you did anything solely for yourself?

So take these tips and craft a novel that would rival A Separate Peace! I am entirely convinced that ANYONE could do it!

Writerly,
Matt