Top 250. Novel Writing: Choosing a Method that Works Best for You by Margo L. Dill. Riting a novel is one of the biggest accomplishments of a writer’s life. Every novelist has her own way of writing a novel. From outlining to sticky notes to just writing the darn thing, novel writing is a process that can differ for each writer. If you have never written a novel but you have a brilliant idea for one, then maybe you can find a process here that might work for you. For those novelists out there struggling with their current methods, look these over and try something new.
Outlining The very word, outlining, causes some writers to break out in hives. Others can’t live without their outlines, and they refer to them every time they work on their novels. Lynn Viehl, who has written 42 novels in 5 genres under different pseudonyms, writes about outlining novels on her blog, Paperback Writer. Most writers, who use outlining, swear by it, and they usually write an outline that looks something like this: Chapter Summaries Sometimes with outlining, people get hung up on the format. How To Write A Novel Using The Snowflake Method. Writing a novel is easy. Writing a good novel is hard. That’s just life. If it were easy, we’d all be writing best-selling, prize-winning fiction. Frankly, there are a thousand different people out there who can tell you how to write a novel.
There are a thousand different methods. In this article, I’d like to share with you what works for me. This page is the most popular one on my web site, and gets over a thousand page views per day, so you can guess that a lot of people find it useful. Good fiction doesn’t just happen, it is designed. For a number of years, I was a software architect designing large software projects. I claim that that’s how you design a novel — you start small, then build stuff up until it looks like a story. If you’re like most people, you spend a long time thinking about your novel before you ever start writing.
But before you start writing, you need to get organized. Step 1) Take an hour and write a one-sentence summary of your novel. Shorter is better. Choosing a story goal. By Glen C. Strathy* The first and most important element of any plot is the Story Goal or Problem. This is the organizing idea around which the entire plot of your novel will be based. Without a goal, a plot becomes just a haphazard series of events with no meaning or purpose – one that will leave the reader wondering, “What was the point of that story?” With a clear goal, the reader has a context that lets him appreciate the relevance of each event in the story. It allows the reader to become emotionally involved in your novel and to care about the outcome.
Fundamentally, the story goal is “what the story is about.” For instance, if you were to ask a literature student, “What is Shakespeare's play, Macbeth, about?” That's because literature courses often teach you that a story is about its theme. Theme is, of course, an important element of a story. But there's a difference.
So, put simply, the story goal is what the protagonist wants to achieve, or the problem he/she wants to solve. National Novel Writing Month.