Friday, March 2, 2007

Write Your Novel Step By Step (Part 3)

This is going to be the third excerpt on writing your novel. I am going to try and put these editions out as quickly as I can but that is only when time allows. I love writing and that is what I am doing all the time. Am I a good writer? I don’t know. What I do know is that I am getting to be a better writer with every word I put on paper and you too can become a good writer. To write your novel just follow these steps that I am laying out and at the end you will have something that at least you are proud of.

11. What You Know To Start

When you first start your book it’s important to write about things that you are familiar with. Places that you have lived at, worked at or just visited. Things that you know a little bit about. Maybe you work in the oil path so you want your story to be on a rig. Lastly maybe you know some interesting people that you could use some of their traits to build an exciting character.

12. Characters First

Since your characters are harder to develop you should work on them first. Remember your readers are going to want characters that come to life. Another thing is that your character can’t really change half way through the story. Look at your character kind of like a snowball. He starts off small and eventually becomes big. The plot could change in your story half way through but not your character.

13. Know Your Characters

When you’re done with this exercise you will know your characters intimately. Choose a couple of females, a couple of males and some kids and start building your characters. I use a loose leaf book and use one page per character. You want to build your characters traits. What do they look like? Are they fat, skinny, tall, short, what color are their hair and eyes? Maybe they are bald. Do they have hobbies? What do they like to eat? Are they normal or do they have a sick or sadistic side to them? It doesn’t matter if these are main characters or small part characters. By giving them a life of their own it will help your readers relate to them.

14. Formula

You are going to want to build yourself some sort of formula for a story. Let’s say your writing about a fictional serial killer. You’re going to want to decide how many people he will kill. Will these people be female or male? Will he kill during the day or night? What happens if you run into problems with your story? For me when I was writing my serial killer novel and I ran into a road block I just killed someone else. By that time I was usually past my road block.

15. Plot And Characters

Now that you have your characters built you can start building your plot around them. You already know what you want to write about but you have to make sure that your characters and plot don’t go in the opposite direction. The characters and plot have to move to the ultimate finish together.

Okay this is the end of my second lesson on my step by step series on how to write a novel. Remember not everyone is going to write the perfect novel but at the end of the day if you keep following these steps I guarantee no matter what you will have something that you are proud of.

Dale Mazurek


Dale is presently in the process of getting his first novel published. He has also started dabbling in short stories. You can find some of these on his blog at http://stcajo-readshortstories.blogspot.com/ And lastly he deals a little in the affiliate marketing gig which can be checked out at http://www.7dayebook.com/?hop=stcajo orhttp://stcajo.profitlan.hop.clickbank.net You can also contact him at stcajo2011@yahoo for any info on his writing or products.

In writing my novel I learnt a lot of things the hard way so I just wanted to put this series out there for would be writers to help them on their path to writing their own book.

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