Monday, March 5, 2007

Write Your Novel Step By Step (Part 8)

This is going to be the eighth 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.

36. A Hint For Interest

What you want to do to get your readers to turn to the next page is do something exciting on every page. When I say do something that can also be a description of an exciting place, character or event. It doesn’t have to be a fight scene or murder scene every page because that will get redundant and work against you. It’s not always going to be possible to make it happen every page but trust me you don’t want to go more than three pages. This can be something as brilliant as describing how beautiful the moon looks on a dark starry night.

37. Don’t Be Long Winded

Just because you have a computer now which authors of past didn’t doesn’t mean you have to write a 600 page book. Keep things simple. Rather than having a whole pile of elements in your story have less, better described ones. All the means you have is going to tease you into writing more and more pages. Personally I think about 200 pages is plenty. That keeps your reader interested. Plus if you absolutely have more to write then save it for your next book. Maybe you can even write a sequel.

38. Don’t Over Describe

You want to make sure that your characters are true to real life. You can very easily put them over the edge by putting too much description into them. Your reader wants to think of your character as someone they know. Maybe it’s their next door neighbor or some one like that. They won’t relate well if this character is some kind of mole that lives in the middle of the earth. That’s okay if your story is about a mole from the middle of the earth but you will have more success with more realism.

39. Start Your Own Trend

You might have an author that you just adore. You might want to write like him and that’s okay. What’s not okay is copying him. I don’t mean plagiarism but rather writing about all the same things he writes about. Your audience doesn’t want to see Joe Shmo writing about the same things as Dean Koontz. So go ahead and have your favorites but remember to be successful you have to develop your own style.

40. Build A Pyramid

You have to start at the bottom and work your way up one rock at a time. Don’t jump all over the place. Take your time and make those rocks fit nicely into place. Don’t leave any hanging out because not only are you wrecking the look of your structure but you’re also stressing the integrity of the pyramid. By doing things like that you take the chance of the entire structure coming tumbling down. Are you willing to take that chance?

I know a lot of this seems like its going no where but trust me I write this from experience. Writing a book is no easy task. I wish someone would have helped me out like this when I first started writing. I will tell you one thing. Now this relates to me and it could to you but you have to want it to. No matter how hard the writing got I never disliked it. I still love writing and maybe this is a pipe dream but I hope to be able to retire and live totally off the money I earn from writing. Okay this is the end of lesson 8. I hope you are enjoying it so far. I also hope you are taking advantage of the opportunity to print this out because if all goes well I will make this into an e book so take advantage of it free.

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://affiliatemarketingfornewbies.blogspot.com/

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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