Here’s what I’ve written so far:
Stand on your head to see things differently
Teaching writing really helped me to teach myself to write. Having taught narrative structure for over ten years, I took a screenwriting class where the idea of narrative arcs was upfront and centre. I think some novelists take a quasi-spiritual, floaty attitude to creativity and stumble on narrative arcs almost by accident, unless they have good teachers. Screenwriters are all about the narrative arc. The arc is the same, the way they think about it totally different.
Now I am writing another novel I have created my own one-page description of the narrative arc and have used it to create ‘scene descriptors’ – answers to particular questions that give me a guide to writing each scene. I use them as friendly instruction sheets. This is enlightening. I no longer have a complicated plan that even I can’t understand (!) – now I have something workable, friendly and ergonomic. K.M. Weiland’s work taught me the importance of being friendly to yourself and reminded me of the power of questions. If you’re looking for a friendly guide to outlining a novel – try her workbook.
I first published a guide to planning a novel in 2012. I had been teaching a year-long third year undergraduate module on novel writing for a while and I needed a way to cover the bases and to get the exercises across to students without bombarding them. I decided to put it all into a book.
At the same time, I was looking into self-publishing at work, and organised a symposium on it, where several speakers came in to talk about what it meant to be a self-published writer at the time. I didn’t know much about it, so I had a go at publishing an ebook so I could see how the process worked. I didn’t sell many copies, but it taught me a lot. We were also able to give copies of the book to students so they had lots of guidance in one place.
Then we started publishing an anthology of student work at Roehampton and we suddenly had to teach ourselves about setting up a small press, about POD technology and book design.
Eventually I decided to rewrite my book on planning a novel, and turn it into a guide to writing and publishing a novel, using the lessons I had learnt from all this hands-on experience. The aim was still to have a resource to send students to if they needed it, but I also wanted to explain why narrative structure is important and how I’ve used it.
Here I am in 2017, wiser about some of the process, but still learning. The difference is that now I realise I can teach myself how to do stuff by writing it down and asking questions, which is what I’ve tried to do in How to Write a Novel and Get It Published.
The book is about four things:
1. How do you actually go about writing a novel in the first place?
2. How can you create a workable plan for a novel?
3. How do you fit novel writing into your life, practically-speaking?
4. How do you get the book published?
I am using the techniques in the book to write my own novel as we speak – I’ve incorporated narrative structure using the scene sheets, for example.
So, this book has evolved over time, and has come out of teaching novel writing, and trying to get to grips with narrative structure. It’s only one way of doing it, but almost all of the activities are flexible enough that you can take what you need and leave what you don’t. Check it out while it’s still only 99p! (I’m still getting the hang of the marketing thing and I’m not sure it suits me, but you’ve got to admit that 99p is a bargain.) Let me know what you think of the book.
Get your copy of How to Write a Novel and Get It Published myBook.to/writeanovel
Happy writing,
Louise xxx