Write Your Novel Step By Step (Part 14)

This is going to be the fourteenth 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.

66. Reading Your Work

Now everybody is going to go back and read their entire book from cover to cover. Don’t get your eraser and pencil out yet because it’s not quite time for that yet. I want you to start reading your book out loud. You’re going to find stuff in there that you don’t like but that’s okay. Don’t fret it. Just make a mental note and keep reading. Very important. Don’t start crossing stuff out yet or adding stuff because the most important part you are trying to determine is how the book is going to flow.

67. Cutting Your Story

Ok now the time has come. You are going to go through your story paragraph by paragraph. I will guarantee there is going to be stuff you want to cut and stuff you want to add so now is the time. Go ahead and start editing. Get rid of the good for nothing phrases that you put in there as fillers and add the content that you forgot or came up with later.

68. Read Again

You already read your book out loud once and now you’re going to do it again but this time you’re going to do it one page at a time. You will stop at the end of each page. You will read that one page as many times as you need to so that you can get rid of poor sentence structure or maybe you are going to add something. Don’t go on to the next page until you are happy with the last one. I am warning you that this can get redundant and even boring but you have to keep excited because this is all parts in writing a book.

69. Excessive Stuff

Now you want to have a look at your work and cut all the unnecessary stuff. Too many metaphors or similes. The similes will kill you. However it is important that you don’t cut stuff you’re going to regret. So once again I stress that you take your time and make sure everything sounds good.

70. Cutting Tips

Here’s a little trick when you are cutting stuff from your story. It is almost a guarantee that you have put too much meat into your paragraphs so this is what you are going to do. You are going to go ahead and cut either one adjective or adverb out of each paragraph in your story. Remember this isn’t a hard fast rule. You might have a paragraph that you can’t afford to cut but I am willing to bet that most paragraphs will be able to be cut.

I know a lot of this seems like it’s going nowhere 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 14. 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.