Jack Woodville London - A Novel Approach

A NOVEL APPROACH

To

Writing Your First Book

(Or Your Best One)

Jack Woodville London

Vire Press, LLC

Austin, Texas

A NOVEL APPROACH

Copyright 2014 by Jack Woodville London

All rights reserved.

Due to Space limitations, the list of copyrighted material used in this book appears in the acknowledgements.

This is a non-fiction work of educational, critique, and review material and commentary. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage and retrieval systems, without the written permission of the publisher except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

Published by

Vire Press, LLC,

2905 San Gabriel St #204, Austin, TX 78705

Austin, Texas

www.virepress.com

Editor in Chief: Mindy Reed, The Authors Assistant

Book Design: Vire Press, LLC

London, Jack W. 1947-

A Novel Approach/Jack Woodville London

ISBN 13: 978-0-9906121-1-7

DCMA Agent Pam Corn at:

2905 San Gabriel Street, Suite 204

Austin, TX 78705

Telephone: (512) 476-6006

Fax: (512) 476-0657

See more at: http://jwlbooks.com/takedown-policy-dmca-agent-copyright/#sthash.1nCYZADz.dpuf

Published in the United States of America

DAN POYNTER, Author of SUCCESSFUL NONFICTION, IS THERE A BOOK INSIDE YOU? , and President of Para Publishing Company

I believe both new and seasoned authors should read up on what makes a novel into a page turner as theyre writing for ideas and to nudge their memories. Londons A NOVEL APPROACH goes on the list of books I recommend to my students and clients for such last minute prompts.

CArolyn HOWARD-JOHNSON , Author of the HowToDoItFrugally series of books for writers

Every author and aspiring author should read A NOVEL APPROACH before they begin to write even their first sentence. London takes writers to the sacred ground of creative writing, where great novels are born. This book is destined to become the new golden yardstick by which writers will measure their skills.

WILLIAM H. MCDONALD , Author, Award-Winning Poet, Founder of AMERICAN AUTHORS ASSOCIATION and MILITARY WRITERS SOCIETY OF AMERICA

At Editing TLC, I work with clients who range from inexperienced writers to those who have taken the time to study the art of writing. What Ive discovered in A NOVEL APPROACH is a resource which will be on a suggested reading list for all of my clientsno matter where they fall on the writing spectrum. The way that Jack Woodville London shares memorable examples from literature to hit home the concepts of writing is truly novel. To me, it is what makes this resource stand above others and why I highly recommend it.

JOYCE M. GILMOUR , Editing TLC, www.editingtlc.com

Aspiring authors and old pros alike will find it useful and fun.

JOYCE FAULKNER former President of MILITARY WRITERS SOCIETY OF AMERICA and Award-Winning Novelist, ghostwriter, and graphic designer

I wish Id had this book when I was starting out. Im just glad to have it now. A NOVEL APPROACH is an indispensable tool for anyone whos serious about making it as a novelist.

JEFF EDWARDS , Award-Winning Author of SEA OF SHADOWS, and THE SEVENTH ANGEL

Jack Woodville London has stripped away the intimidating mystery of good writing mechanics. His presentation and explanation of the tools of the trade, grammar, structure, and above all, how to use words themselves, is clear, concise, accessible, and engaging. His egalitarian use of examples ranging from high literature to bestselling potboilers is as entertaining as it is instructive. Though the book's theme is about how to write a novel well, A NOVEL APPROACH fills a more important need as a useful reference for how to communicate using the written word.

DWIGHT JON ZIMMERMAN , #1 NEW YORK TIMES Bestselling Author, and President of MILITARY WRITERS SOCIETY OF AMERICA

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Tennyson said, and it is especially true at this point, that I am a part of all that I have met. The ideas in A Novel Approach belong to many whom I have met and read and under whom I have studied, as well as to me. As you can tell from the references, not even all the words are mine. I want to acknowledge them.

First, I want to thank for gracious permission to use copyrighted excerpts from their fine books:

The GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING by Tracy Chevalier; copyright 1999 by Tracy Chevalier. Used by permission of Plume, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA) LLC;

Excerpt from THE THINGS THEY CARRIED by Tim OBrien. Copyright 1990 by Tim OBrien. Reprint by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved;

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas, translated by Robin Buss, (Penguin Books, Ltd 2006) copyright Robin Buss 1996;

"Two phone calls and a funeral," from A SHORT HISTORY OF TRACTORS IN UKRAINIAN by Marina Lewycka, copyright (c) 2005 by Marina Lewycka. Used by permission of The Penguin Press, a division of Penguin Group (USA) LLC.

Random House for David Copperfield by Charles Dickens;

Penguin Random House for The March by E.L. Doctorow;

Penguin Random House for Spies of the Balkans by Alan Furst;

Random House for Neptunes Inferno by James Hornfischer;

Gutenberg for Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte and ScaramouchE by Rafael Sabatini;

Dover for The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane;

Harper Collins for A Scandal in Bohemia by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle;

Random House for Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Dell Edition;

Random House for The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown, Doubleday Edition;

Gutenberg for Dracula by Bram Stoker.

These authors and books will help you to become a better writer as well as a delighted reader and I urge you to read them.

We are grateful to the U.S. Navy for permission to use U.S. Navy photo (ID 101026-N-7526R-243) by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Marc Rockwell-Pate/Released. In addition, holdings in the public domain played a valuable role in this book and I acknowledge the British Library, London, for Loves Philosophy by Percy Bysshe Shelley; the Carolina Rediviva Library , Uppsala University , Sweden, for The Carta Marina, by Olaus Magnus; the Mauritshuis Museum in The Hague, for Girl with a Pearl Earring by Johannes Vermeer; the North West University Library for 16th-20 th Century Maps of Africa ( Morocco 1634 by Gerard Mercator #4172298); the Museum of Fine Art, Boston, for Haystack: Effect of Snow , by Claude Monet; the Uffizzi Gallery, Florence, for Birth of Venus, by Sandro Botticelli; and the Belvedere Palace, Vienna, for The Kiss by Gustav Klimt.

A Novel Approach would not have been possible without the human assistance, advice, and contributions by Maria Edwards, Mindy Reed, Samuel Joseph, Rusty Shelton, Shelby Sledge, and Jeff Edwards for untiring efforts to bring this book to print.

Finally, I thank Joyce Faulkner, whose request that I write a series of short Twitter comments for budding writers about the craft of writing prodded me to pick up the threads of my lessons and ideas and to share them with others, just as others have helped me.

To each of you, thank you.

FOREWORD

This is a book of ideas.

Apart from grammar, there are few steadfast rules for writing books. Some of the most revered works tell the ending on page one, use unconventional structures such as three line paragraphs or one paragraph chapters, or employ run-on sentences that describe the age of the varnish applied to the wood that forms the base of the bar of the saloon that is on a nameless street where someone who will never be heard from again goes for a drink on a day when nothing much happened. The variety of structure and detail is almost infinite. Nevertheless, there are some conventions.