Morris - Nail Your Novel: Why Writers Abandon Books and How You Can Draft, Fix and Finish With Confidence

By Roz Morris

Nail Your Novel Why Writers Abandon Books and How You Can Draft, Fix and Finish With Confidence

Roz Morris

Published by Roz Morris

Copyright 2011 Roz Morris

Connect with Roz Morris at

Twitter http://twitter.com/nailyournovel

Website http:// www.nailyournovel.com /

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Why a planned novel is more likely to succeed in todays market. What this book is and how to use it. thumbnail notes on writercraft. Start now.

My abandoned book a cautionary tale. Why I developed a plan .

Aims at this stage. What youre ignoring.

Aims recap. Ready to start the actual text

Aims at this stage. What youre ignoring.

.

. Aims recap.

How rough your manuscript will look and why thats good. Your novel is now a new creature. Characters take over.

Aims at this stage

The publishing business. Give your novel the best chance you can.

Have you got a novel inside you? Many people say they have. Theyll get round to writing it some day just not now. Or, if now is the perfect time, theyre not sure how to go about it.

Maybe you already write. In which case you know theres a lot to worry about. Character, plot, arcs, plot points, tone, narrators, narrative, viewpoint, metaphor, themes, language, imagery, genre, research, pacing. Phew. Youll probably also know that a novel is a holistic organism in which each of those elements sparks off all the others.

How do you hit all those marks AND make a fascinating story?

Most things we do we have a plan for. In most jobs, if we have a task to do, theres a project plan, a schedule, a methodology.

But many people start a novel and hope theyll muddle through.

Ive been writing novels for years and helping floundering writers find their way. What I notice time and time again is that so many make it very hard for themselves, even experienced authors.

Im not saying writing a novel is easy. Nor that anyone could do it.

But there are ways to make it much harder than it needs to be.

For instance, many writers paint themselves into a corner because they are tackling a problem at the wrong time. They get blocked because the critical parts of their brain are inhibiting their creativity. Or their overactively inventive imagination is stopping them seeing the simple, rational solution. Or they are attempting to spice up a dull story by adding more events, when really they need to find a way to examine the ones they already have.

There are times when you can usefully fret about phrasing, or whether your character saw her boyfriend last week or last night.

And there are times when that is a colossal waste of energy.

I hate wasting energy. And as a professional I cant afford to. Ive developed a method to tackle all the milestones of writing a novel, from initial inspiration to final polish. Its smart and efficient. It draws on techniques from Hollywood scriptwriting, improvisational drama, project management and sports psychology because experts in those fields have already solved problems that novel-writers come across.

Im going to tell you the way to nail your novel.

I am a professional writer with more than a dozen finished novels under my belt. I ghost as other people and I write under my own name. Eight of my novels are bestsellers. I also freelance for a critiquing consultancy. I love stories and storytelling if you do too, drop in on my website, www.nailyournovel.com - inspiration and creative provocation for writers.

My method will not only help you finish a novel, it makes the whole writing business a lot more creative and fun. A thoroughly planned novel takes less time to write. Even better, it is more likely to succeed in todays market because it will have been properly structured, fixed and polished.

If youve never finished writing a novel before, imagine how youd feel if you got all the way to the end.

This book is a complete project plan for writing a novel. Its a short book because theres no need to make it a long one. And if youre trying to start a novel you dont need yet another thing to do before you can begin. Your time is precious and you need to get going.

Some writing guides make you go through a series of exercises to warm you up before you embark on a proper piece of writing. Write 200 words every morning on a noun picked at random from the dictionary that sort of thing.

Theres none of that here because I dont believe thats necessary. This is the age of communication. You can all text, email, tweet, blog, comment, review and write letters. You already know how to put your thoughts into prose.

What I will make you do is quite a lot of tasks that arent writing the actual text of your book. But they will all be work on your novel. But no exercises, no time wasting. From the word go, you are getting on with your novel. This is all work that will shape the finished book.

This is not a book about the detailed mechanics of plot, character etc, although I will give thumbnail notes on the essentials when you need to be thinking especially about them. There are many good books that go into those aspects of writercraft in exhaustive detail, and we all have our own favourites according to the genre we write and the kind of tutoring we relate to.

But this plan can be used no matter what genre you want to write. Whether youre a first-timer or an old timer.

It will help you use stories and what you learn from other books to the maximum because you will get the best out of your ideas.

It will also enable you to troubleshoot. Not just logistical problems such as how to get your characters out of a sinking boat, or how to spot if your plottings a mess. Writers also need to battle hiccups in their confidence and motivation. I know all the enemies to writing and the destroyers of creativity. Ill help you outsmart them. The bad times when you dont know what to do, or youre fed up with the manuscript. Where your creativity is mired in sludge and your writers block goes from wall to wall.

All these problems have solutions if you know how to find them.

You can start work now. The step-by-step process will tell you all you need to do as you go along.

Your working day starts with a cup of coffee and this book. You read a bit, then do as it says. When youve completed that task, read a bit more. Ill anticipate when youre likely to get stuck and Ill tell you how to get out of it.

If youve got a novel abandoned in a drawer, you can use this book to resurrect it. Not just that but your enthusiasm, that little flame of belief that got you all excited in the first place.

Whether youre starting from scratch or revisiting a previous attempt, if you follow the steps all the way to the end youll have a finished, polished novel in your hands.

Where does it all go wrong? Let me tell you a little story. Long ago, I had an idea for a novel. Id got a set-up and some characters, and a cracking setting based on a place I knew. The creative sap was rising and I couldnt contain myself any longer. I plunged in and started writing.