Kurzitza - So you want to write a novel

So You Want To Write A Novel

By J.P. Kurzitza

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Smashwords Edition

A Purple Punk Publishing Rag

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Copyright 2011 J.P. Kurzitza

For my grandmother, who taught me that if I watered the plants regularly, they would grow.

INTRODUCTION

Hello, my fellow newbie-writer in pursuit of perfect prose. Welcome to my instructional booklet that offers practical tools to help get your butt in gear and finish that book youve always dreamed about writing.

Let me first start by saying that I wrote this booklet with the assumption that you already have an awesome story idea that is just yearning to be turned into a novel. While I can help you plot and plan the skeletal aspects of your future book, sadly, if you dont have a clue what to write about, I cant help you.

Someone once wisely said, the story is everything . If you dont already have that, then this booklet wont be of much use to you. No amount of exceptionally written pages or well crafted sentences will do enough to make your book a page-turner if you dont have a compelling story. Its like spraying a skunk with perfumeit just masks the inevitable stench that will surely follow. Being an English major doesnt necessarily mean you can come up with a great story idea, although you may certainly know how to write the crap out of a sentence.

You dont want your story to be a 3 dressed up as a 9 (as Trooper once said), do you? Nobody does, and especially not your readers. They can see through all the smoke and mirrors of well written sentences that lack the foundation of a rich story. So make your story a 9 dressed up as, well, a 9!

Long story short: find a compelling story idea!

Ill be honest with you againthis booklet was expressly designed to offer you my two story templates Ive developed. Theyre awesome, lets just get that out of the way right now, and should really help you organize what most often becomes the daunting task of planning a novel.

Also, its probably important to stress that this booklet was also designed expressly for writing fiction novels. YA, Adult, it doesnt really matter what genre. The templates herein will work for any fiction sub-genre. If youre writing non-fiction, or how-to books, this may not be the best resource for you. Sorry.

However, because of my kind-hearted nature and willingness to help you succeed, and because of all the struggles and hours I spent figuring out how to do all this stuff while narrowly avoiding confinement to a psychiatric ward, I will briefly touch on techniques to help with characterization and story-idea development.

Youre welcome. Yeah, I know Im a nice guy.

So, I suppose we should do things in an orderly fashion, much like you would do when planning your first book. Organizing and planning your steps will be a key issue throughout your writing process. Everything from developing characters, to building plotlines, to developing chapters, to developing scenes for each chapter will demand that you be methodical and, dare I say, even maniacal when putting things in the right order.

In following with the order of all things relating to writing, you cant do much unless you have a good story, so lets go ahead and begin the process of making one up.

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UNEARTH THE STORY (ONE SENTENCE AT A TIME)

I read somewhere that being a writer is like being an archaeologist. All of our story ideas are usually right in front of us, buried deep down somewhere, and its up to us to carefully sift through all the rubble and the obstacles that tend to cover them up, and expose them for the whole world to read.

I paraphrased a bit, but you get the gist.

Youre saying, okay, Mr. Smarty-pants, so wheres my story? My answer to you would be: ask yourself a hypothetical question regarding a moment or scene in your mind, or about something youve witnessed at a bus stop, or in the grocery store. Once youve come up with an enticing question, put it into a synopsis sentence. The synopsis sentence should encompass the essence of your entire story in one line. But first, the question.

What if questions are great ways to start things off. Example: Weve all driven by a police cruiser thats pulled a car over to the shoulder of the road and weve all rubber-necked and wondered what kind of trouble that person may or may not be in. So, what if the guy being pulled over was an off-duty officer? What if hes a rookie cop on the force trying to expose police corruption within his precinct, and now hes being hounded and harassed by crocked cops?

Sure, this may be a clichd story idea, but its strictly for the demonstration purposes of this section. Now that youve got a story idea, write out a sysnopsis sentence encompassing the general story idea. Its important to be succinct with your sentenceno longer than 16-20 words. Its supposed to be general. Youll have plenty of opportunity to expand and add all the detail during the actual writing of the story.

So, with the story idea weve come up about the pulled-over vehicle, heres a synopsis sentence example Ive come up with: A nave rookie cop dealing with corruption within his precinct uncovers a citywide conspiracy that threatens all citizens. Not bad. Intriguing for those readers that like a good thriller, Id say. Now its your turn. Come up with your own story idea and put it into a thesis sentence.

Lets try another example of unearthing a story and writing the corresponding synopsis sentence. Rain falls and pools around streets, and flows into sewers. But where does the water really go? What if the rain was highly toxic? What if the government was siphoning some of this water into a special classified reservoir that they used to create hybrid humans? What if some of the water collected at the bottom of an open sewer in an urban neighbourhood and a boy found out about it?

Now the synopsis sentence for this story: A boy discovers a secret reservoir of super-water containing properties that grant special powers to those who drink it. Sounds like a pretty good Juvenile fiction book to me. Now you give it a try.

Thats the beauty of fiction, isnt it? Seemingly everyday ordinary occurrences can be transformed and shaped into anything you want with a little imagination. I hope I dont scare you off, but that was the easy part. Now comes the tougher partstill fun, dont get me wrongbut requiring a bit more effort.

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CHARACTERIZATIONWHO ARE THEY?

So weve developed two fairly compelling stories to work with, and now we want to populate said stories with equally compelling characters. But its not as simple as plugging in Randy the rookie cop, or Owen the boy. We need to take time and carefully mould and shape our characters first. Yes, story is everything, but a protagonist whos one-dimensional and boring, or unsympathetic wont keep the readers attention for more than a few chapters.

Before I introduce you to my story templates, I have character templates that I use and wish to share them with you now. For this purpose, Im going to work with the second hypothetical story we developed involving the boy and the super-water. Lets call the book idea Hydro-boy.

For the purpose of this example, lets develop three characters for the storytwo main, and one supporting. Our hero, the protagonist, will be called Owen. The villain, the antagonist, will be called Professor Von Baddie. The heros friend, the supporting cast, will be called Zachary.

The focus for character development is to get personal with each character, even if they are minor characters. Knowing intimate details, even if some of these details are never revealed to the reader, will help you when you write the characters into your story. Youll have that extra feel and personality when writing your characters that will make them seem like the genuine article.