Your First Novel

by Ann Rittenberg

  • Short Stories. Short stories are not easier to write than novels, but they ate shorter and usually take less time to compose. Many successful novelists—David Schickler (Kissing in Manhattan) and Janet Fitch (White Oleander), lor instance—wrote and sold short fiction before their first novels were published. (Ann will discuss this approach in greater detail in chapter thirteen.) A short story is a challenge because all the meaning has to be communicated in only a few pages, but if you need a sense of completion to set you free, try short fiction.

  • Writing Courses. Take a writing class (poetry, short story, playwriting, screenwriting) that will require you to finish and turn in one or more writing projects before the last session. Deadlines can be very useful.

  • The Three-Day Novel Writing Contest. If you really want to challenge yourself, try this exercise. Participants sit down with only an outline and compose a novel (or novella) in seventy-two hours, starting at midnight on Friday and stopping Monday at midnight. The average length of contest manuscripts is one hundred pages. Once you have scaled this mountain, you know what you are capable of—you can write fast and produce over thirty pages a day under pressure. These are not the conditions that usually produce the best writing, but the experience gives the participant a unique sense of accomplishment. (To find out how to enter the actual contest, see the Web site for the International 3-Day Novel Contest at http://www.3daynovel.com/. But you don't have to enter the contest to play the game. Just set aside any three-day weekend.)

  Choose an idea that doesn't need research and is easy to track. Choose a voice that comes to you naturally and rolls off your imagination without a hitch. Write the outline in enough detail so you don't have to stop and figure out plot points, but don't write it in so much detail that you're tired of scenes before you get to them. It must all be fresh. If you're going to write forty pages a day you need to come to each scene chomping at the bit. Also, find a place to hide where you won't be interrupted by phone calls, television, pets, or visitors. Don't plan to do anything else during those seventy-two hours. Make sure you have everything you'll need (food, paper, ink, references, outline) so you won't be forced to stop for a shopping trip. Sleep some. Sixty hours of writing with a fresh brain is better than seventy-two hours of writing with a mush brain.

  At the end of the weekend, you might not have a masterpiece, but you might have a draft you can rewrite and expand into a good novel. You might have a novella you can trim down into a good short story. Or you might not have anything worth keeping, but you'll still have had a great adventure.

  THE ENDING_

  As you finish your first draft, slow down when you get to the last page or two. The words you use to end your story flavor the whole novel. This is your chance to shine your brightest. Bring together all the power and beauty of your storytelling as you say goodbye to your readers. Show them where they've been—remind them what it's all about—and save the best for last. Here are examples of great endings.

  Above, the sky was clear, growing pale towards sunrise. Still in the sky, high now and steady, hung the star. But while I watched it the pale sky grew brighter round it, flooding it with gold and soft fire, and then with a bursting wave of brilliant light, as up over the land where the herald star had hung, rose the young sun.

  —The Crystal Cave, by Mary Stewart

  It was a secret wanting, like a song I couldn't stop humming, or loving someone I could never have. No matter where I went, my compass pointed west. I would always know what time it was in California.

  —White Oleander, by Janet Fitch

  By and by all trace is gone, and what is forgotten is not only the footprints but the water too and what is down there. The rest is weather. Not the breath of the disremembered or the unaccounted for, but wind in the eaves, or spring ice thawing too quickly. Just weather. Certainly no clamor for a kiss. Beloved.

  —Beloved, by Toni Morrison

  They all come from the same place and go back to a time when only the stones howled. Step-and-a-Half hummed in her sleep and sank deeper into her own tune, a junker's pile of tattered courting verse and hunter's wisdom and the utterances of itinerants or words that sprang from a bit of grass or a scrap of cloud or a prophetic pig's knuckle, in a world where butchers sing like angels.

  —The Master Butchers Singing Club, by Louise Erdrich

  Go back and read the last paragraphs of your favorite novel. What do those few sentences say about the whole story? Does a simple image point to a larger theme? Now think about your own work. What images, messages, or reflections will you use to echo the most powerful ideas in your story?

  RECOMMENDED READING

  Bird by Bird, by Anne Lamott. If you ever feel overwhelmed by the concept of writing a three-hundred-page novel, read the story that plays the title role in this charming book. Lamott's method of looking at a character through a one-inch frame is an excellent exercise for finding meaningful details. (And her take on professional jealousy is a hoot.)

  Immediate Fiction, by Jerry Cleaver. As you create your best moments, this book can help you build to them by teaching you to wind up a ticking clock.

  CHAPTER SEVEN:

  the nuts and bolts

  MECHANICS_

  Different people write in different ways. Some write from the first page and plow through to the last. Others write a scene from chapter five on Sunday and a scene from chapter two on Monday. Some rewrite each chapter several times before moving on to the next. Some write one hour a day, others six. Some produce five pages a day and some five sentences. But whether you write ten pages a day or one, at some point you will have a complete rough draft. Here's where the nuts and bolts come in.

  You have now written a wonderful story, but it will not win you an agent, or sell to a publisher, if it is laced with technical errors. Your spelling, grammar, and punctuation need to be correct, even if you're only handing over your manuscript to a close friend or critique group member. Mistakes are not only distracting to your reader, they tell him you are an amateur and not ready to break in. The fact that your verb tense is wrong in one line might not seem very important compared to your huge, brilliant novel, but if the mistake shows up on page 1, you've ruined your reader's first impression of you.

  GRAMMAR

  Most word-processing programs have a grammar checker. This might not work perfectly for you every time, but look at the hints. Read Strunk and White's The Elements of Style to brush up your grammar. Mistakes will not only make you look bad, they might transform your story in ways you hadn't intended. For example, there's nothing wrong with writing a scene where your hero is summoned by the doorbell before he has a chance to get dressed in the morning, but if you say He opened the door in his pajamas, you've turned him into a flasher. If you're not writing science fiction or horror you'll want to avoid images like this: That day a snake was discovered by a backpacker with two heads. And your protagonist will be unintentionally menacing if you make this mistake: She decided the dog was a threat to her little boy. He'd have to be put to sleep.

  SPELLING

  Spell check is also part of most word-processing programs. Use it! Again, don't press the "replace" button without looking at what it suggests. I once wrote the name of a music store, the Wherehouse, and my computer offered to change it to Whorehouse. And always have a dictionary nearby when you write. Isle and aisle are very different, but if you use one for the other your computer will not highlight it as misspelled.

  If you have a character name that, when typed incorrectly, is another word (like Brian misspelled as Brain, or Dan as And), look for the possible misspelling of these names carefully. Also, if you replace a character's name using the replace function, do a search for the new name through your manuscript.

  PUNCTUATION

  Again, your word processing program might help you out here, but The Elements of Style is still my favorite book on the subject. If you write it's (it is) when you mean its (possessive), you'll look like a beginner. If you have any doubt
about a punctuation mark, look it up.

  PARAGRAPHS

  Look at books in your genre. How many lines are in the average paragraph? Don't use a paragraph break every other line, but don't write two-page paragraphs, either. Spread out your pages, a few at a time, and see how you have chosen to break up the text. If you need to combine paragraphs, or create new breaks, think about changes in action or thought that give your prose shape. If something is very important to remember, start a new paragraph with that point, or give it its own paragraph.

  SO VERY SUDDENLY ...

  Use the Find tool on your word-processing program to look for very, suddenly, and so. These are three commonly overused modifiers. Notice how the following passage is improved by deleting them.

  WRONG

  My slippers were so very thin: I could walk the matted floor as softly as a cat. Suddenly he glided up the gallery and up the stairs, and stopped in the very dark, low corridor of the fateful third story: I had followed and suddenly stood at his side.

  RIGHT

  My slippers were thin: I could walk the matted floor as softly as a cat. He glided up the gallery and up the stairs, and stopped in the dark, low corridor of the fateful third story: I had followed and stood at his side. —Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte

  Without the words so, very, and suddenly, this passage is 10 percent tighter.

  TENSE

  If your tense is off, the word-processing program will usually catch it. Pay attention. You'd have to have a brilliantly artistic reason for breaking tense.

  NOT THIS

  He opens his coat and takes out a knife, then smiled.

  BUT THIS

  He opened his coat and took out a knife, then smiled. OR THIS

  He opens his coat and takes out a knife, then smiles.

  SENTENCE STRUCTURE AND SHAPE

  Part of the beauty of great prose is the rhythm of the words, the shape of the sentences and paragraphs. Your sentence lengths should vary. If you write too many short, or too many long, sentences in a row, adjust for variation. Don't be random. Read your work aloud and listen for the natural flow of your writing.

  NOT AS GOOD

  He noticed the ladder wasn't where he expected it to be. It was usually lying there. Now it was raised against one of the windows. It was a second-floor window. The window stood wide open. He passed the ladder. Looking back, he saw a man descend the ladder.

  BETTER

  He noticed that a ladder, which usually lay there, was raised against one of the windows, of the second floor, which was wide open. After passing, he looked back and saw a man descend the ladder.

  —A Study in Scarlet, by Arthur Conan Doyle

  NOT AS GOOD

  And, of course, there were some more who were frankly jealous, and very few of them hated her, and only three of them were planning to murder her, but Buttercup, naturally, knew none of this.

  BETTER

  And, of course, there were some more who were frankly jealous. Very few of them hated her.

  And only three of them were planning to murder her. Buttercup, naturally, knew none of this.

  —The Princess Bride, by William Goldman

  FREQUENTLY MADE MISTAKES (FMMS)

  Even if you are only handing your novel over to a friend or family member, it's best to take care of potential problems before you let anyone see your work. The following is a list of some of the most common errors found in the pages of first novels.

  • Technical Errors. Blatant mistakes, like the ones described earlier in this chapter.

  • Who Cares? A plot in which nothing important happens, or that is filled with characters we don't care about. (Review chapter four for tips on creating tension and chapter five for ways to create characters that get under the reader's skin.)

  • Deja vu. Common plots, cliche lines, stereotypical characters. If you're going to write the story of benign robots that turn against their creators, you'd better have a fresh take on the subject. Don't describe a cop as a loose cannon or as a guy who plays by his own rules. If you feel like you've heard it somewhere before, you have. (Review chapter six for tips on enhancing your originality.)

  • Mixed Points of View (POVs). Worse than choosing a tricky POV (see chapter three) is being inconsistent with the one you choose. For example, here's a mix of first person and omniscient.

  I walked up to the clerk and handed her my ticket. She looked at the small slip of paper, wondering how long it would be before her dinner break.

  • Misguided Presentation. You want to make an impression on your reader, but let the novel speak for itself. Don't detract from the story with gimmicks. No fishing story manuscripts delivered in tackle boxes, no werewolf stories that look like they have claw marks on them, no medical thrillers with blood stains on the cover. In 99 percent of these cases, gimmicks hurt rather than help.

  LENGTH

  You're telling the best story you can think of in the best way you can—you should be free to use the exact number of words you feel is needed. None-theless, it's important to think about length and your potential audience. Look at the page counts of successful books in your genre. But good things come in packages of all sizes. Here are examples of some big sellers and their page counts:

  • Bernhard Schlink's The Reader, 218

  • Alice Walker's The Color Purple, 245

  • Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient, 307

  • Ian McEwan's Atonement, 351

  • Olive Ann Burns's Cold Sassy Tree, 391

  • Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code, 454

  • Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible, 546

  • Elizabeth Kostova's The Historian, 642

  Look at what your potential readers expect in terms of length—chick-lit comedies aren't one thousand pages long and historical romances are never under a hundred pages. If you find your novel is too long or too short, you can make additions or cuts as suggested in chapter eight. But, of course, there are always exceptions. Harry Potter books are now far longer than the average children's novel (number six was 652 pages). Richard Bach's Jonathan Livingston Seagull has sold millions of copies and is only ninety-two pages long. But try to come close to the length of book to which your target reader is accustomed.

  THE FORMULA FOR WORD COUNTS

  If you are reading guidelines from a particular publisher, and a word count range is requested, you'll need to know how many pages they're asking for. A romance publisher might ask for 65,000 to 100,000 words, a publisher of thrillers might ask for 80,000 to 110,000, a young adult imprint might ask for 35,000 to 75,000. A manuscript page of 25 lines, doubled spaced, in 12-point font, equals approximately 250 words. So there are four pages to each 1,000 words—a book of 75,000 words is 300 pages long. This does not mean that the published book will be 300—most published books are shorter because each published page holds more lines than your double-spaced manuscript page. The published version of your novel may have anywhere from 20 percent to 30 percent fewer pages.

  RECOMMENDED READING

  The First Five Pages, by Noah Lukeman. Lukeman has great advice on the topics of planting a good hook, avoiding melodrama, and finding focus.

  Grammatically Correct, by Anne Stilman. This book demonstrates how incorrect usage can alter your meaning, how logical sentence structure can help the flow of your writing, and how the effects of the active and passive voices can slow your pace.

  The Elephants of Style, by Bill Walsh. As you review your mechanics, try Walsh's book for a witty overview of the basics—everything from Great Moments in Obfuscation to Lies Your English Teacher Told You.

  CHAPTER EIGHT:

  repairs

  SELF-EDITING_

  Chapters eight and nine deal with the revision process. And there are several kinds of rewriting to be done—checking for mistakes, adding, cutting, refining. Some writers complete an entire first draft before they do any revision; others rewrite each chapter before they start the next. Do what works best for you, but I recommen
d that when you finish a first draft of your first novel, you put the manuscript aside for a few days (a few weeks is better) to give yourself more perspective. After taking a break, some passages will impress you, and others will embarrass or depress you. Not to worry. Help is on the way.

  FIXES

  Before you rewrite your manuscript, it is helpful to read through it first with a careful eye, not to criticize your work but to fix it up so it will be as good as possible. As you read, mark things that bother you—things that seem off. Mark certain sentences with the word fix in the margin or by running a highlighter through a problem passage. It might be helpful to

  use the categories of fixes that I mark on my own rough drafts. It speeds up the reworking process when I find these words as hints written in the margins.

  Awk: Awkward—something about the wording or the meaning is off. It needs to be thought through again.

  More: More is needed—you realize that a passage was underwritten or something was not explained well enough. Perhaps there was even some piece of information left out.

  No!: This is way off!—a passage might have seemed like a good idea at the time, but now you see that it is wrong and will have to be completely replaced.

  Close: This part is almost there—the sentence, metaphor, paragraph, bit of dialogue is nearly right. It's not awkward, but it can be improved. You're not going to throw it out—you're just going to tweak it a little.

  Circling: Circle words you know are not perfect. For instance, in the first draft you may find yourself inserting an occasional placebo word with the intention of replacing it with a better word later.

  Move: This bit is in the wrong place—some scenes or pieces of narration are misplaced in the rough draft. Now that you're standing back and looking at the big picture you can mark those passages and find their right homes.

  Check Fact: Sometimes in your rough draft you will write something you haven't researched yet. You guessed how many miles it was between Paris and Berlin, or who was President in 1958. Now you mark those lines so you can check the facts and make a correction if necessary.