#Writing a novel, part 6

How to start a novel

The many different methods to start a short story or a long novel may be:

*The title

*The name of a character

*The name of a location

*A word

*A short sentence

*An idea

*An action

#How to find a title

Some writers will have a title before the story is even written. I’ve never written anything where I knew the title beforehand. For me to find the right title is one of the more difficult parts about writing any story. I usually wait until I’m finished with the story. Once I begin the editing I will look for clues in the story that might suggest a fitting title. Sure, when the title is found one might say, “That was easy,” but it hardly is for me.

I mentioned one of my novels: Seeds of Chaos. That is the title of the complete novel. The story is about a man who travels to different planets and he impregnates the women he encounters (it is erotic Science Fiction!). By the way, that is not the only thing in the book. There is plenty of action in the story. Since the novel ended up as two volumes because of its length, I had to find two titles. That was the difficult part. When I read it again, the title suddenly appeared in my mind. One of the planets where a lot happened was called ‘Eden’s Gate’, and that became the title of the first volume. The second important planet was ‘Hell’s Gate’, so that became the title for the second book.  It seemed simple enough and logical, but it wasn’t so until I decided on the titles.

In my series ‘Lizard World’ I wrote ‘Outpost Epsilon’ first. The title was chosen because the story is about an outpost on an alien planet. For the trilogy that followed later, I needed actually four titles: One for the series and three for the books.

The series title ‘Lizard World’ was easy enough. The story takes place on a planet populated by giant lizards. The title of the first volume is ‘Epsilon’, because the planet is called ‘Epsilon’. The action in book two happens in the main city on the planet: Epsilon City. So book two received the title ‘Epsilon City’. And the story ends in Raptor’s Tooth, a small settlement in the jungle, and that’s how I came up with the title for the third book: Raptor’s Tooth.

Easy? Not really. It only seems that way.

I don’t always use places for the titles.  In my book ‘Bullet of Revenge’ the title came to me as I read the last chapter.

As you see, the title can be many things. It can be

*a place,

*the name of the main character,

*an action,

*a phrase one of the characters utters somewhere in the story

*an idea

*a thing

*it can be one word or a whole sentence

The title of a story is an important part of the whole. If possible, if should be connected to the story and not something that sounds nice, but has nothing to do with the story. Don’t use a title like ‘The Invasion of the Black Turtles’ when there is no mention of black turtles anywhere and if there is no invasion taking place. Use common sense. Don’t try to mislead the reader.

More next time

#Writing a novel, part 5

Writing just for our own enjoyment is different from writing for the enjoyment of others. Suddenly, we find we will have to follow some rules.

I wrote and published a short booklet ‘The Published Writer’, a practical guide to electronic publishing. Obviously, that wasn’t a fantasy novel. I had to take a different approach. First I wrote a bunch of articles. Once they were written I organized them into a particular order. Before I could publish the booklet on Amazon, I had to download their rules. Not on how to write the book, but how to get it into the right format so their program would accept it. When you work with other people you will have to follow some rules.

There are some publishing companies, if you want to publish with them they will dictate what you can write and how they want the story structured. You have to follow their formula. Some writers may not mind that; I do. Perhaps, if you strictly write for money, you will have no choice. I write for my own enjoyment, I write for the love of writing, and I want to entertain my readers. I want them to experience the world I create when they read the story, the way I enjoy writing it. That is only possible if I can put my heart into the story and if I can write it the way I feel it needs to be written. Not by formula but by intuition.

That is one of the reasons so many writers these days go the way of self-publishing their books. There is one drawback to self-publishing. If a writer doesn’t have a good command of the English language, (or the language of their country), the quality of the work may be lacking. As long as a writer writes for his/her own pleasure it doesn’t matter if words are misspelled, sentences structured wrongly, inconsistencies in the story, etc., but the moment a book is published for the world to see, then it is a must to publish only polished material. Then it is most important to follow at least the basic rules of writing. Most people, that includes readers, are somewhat rigid in their ways. They want to see order and established procedures. Anything else and they may not finish reading the novel.

You don’t need to edit your novel when you write for yourself. Once you’re done, you can move on to the next project. Not so if you want to have your creation published. When the story is finished the real work begins. Unless you are nearly perfect in the command of your language, you need to have someone else edit it. No matter how often you read your manuscript, mistakes will still be overlooked. Of course, that also happens if you have your story edited by a professional. Editors are humans, too. They make mistakes like everyone else, but it is always a good idea to have another mind look at what you created. Sometimes we don’t see certain things, not just spelling mistakes. Inconsistencies can pop up easily. There are many ways mistakes can creep in; even it is just the misspelling of the main character’s name. It happened to me. It happens to everyone. I will write more on that in a later article.

More next time

#Writing a novel, part 4

When I wrote there are no set rules on how to write a story it might have caused some misunderstanding. What I meant there are no rules on how to write, especially when one writes just for entertainment, but there are certainly rules how to use the medium of writing, namely the spelling of words, the structuring of a sentence, and the correct words for what you want to say. You can’t make up your own words. Well, I guess that’s not quite true, either. When you write SciFi/Fantasy you can actually create new words for your story, but you still have to explain what they mean. Those words will, as a rule, never make it into the dictionary.

There are exceptions. In 1961 the famous Science Fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein created the word ‘Grok’ for his novel ‘Stranger in a Strange Land’. It is a Martian word that could not be identified in Earthling terms. If you want to learn more about the word ‘Grok’ do a search for Robert A. Heinlein. It will come up. The word ‘Grok’ is one of the words that made it into the dictionary.

So it is possible to create a new word the world may adopt, but it doesn’t happen often.

What I really wanted to say about the ‘no rules’ is the way you write your story. You can start at the beginning, then write the ending, and then fill in the middle. You can write the last scene first and then write the story. Or you can just start at the beginning and keep on writing until the end.

You can create all your characters first, write about their life or you start with one character and build from there. If you have all your characters already in place, you can draw from their life experiences as you write the story. The story can already be written as an outline, and you just flesh it in.

For me, that doesn’t work. My characters develop as the story moves on. I create the characters as they are needed. My characters come alive when my protagonist meets them. That’s when they are born. Once they exist, then I flesh them out with background and so on. But, like I said, no rules. That’s just the way I do it...most of the time. Sometimes I may change the way I write my story. It all depends what I’m writing.

I’ve noticed a lot of TV shows and movies start with an action scene. Some of those scenes don’t even have anything to do with the actual story. They are just there to introduce the main character and to get the viewer hooked. Some books may start out the same way. It seems something so many writers have adopted. That’s one of the so-called rules I meant that you don’t need to follow. Just because everyone does it, doesn’t mean you have to.

I think it is pretty sad if you have to get the interest of viewers or readers with some wild car chase, a murder, or some rescue scene. I don’t need that when I read a book. Sometimes it is nice to have the characters introduced by telling us who they are, or have a description of the strange and exotic world we’ll be visiting for a few hours.

Even the ending doesn’t have to be some earthshaking revelation. I have to admit, I am fond of those, but that’s just my own little fetish. My two-volume novel ‘Seeds of Chaos’ ends with a, I hope, revelation that was not expected. It was meant to leave the reader with something to ponder.

However, like I said, those endings are not required. As long as it is explained who committed the murder that is already okay. Of course, the ending shouldn’t be lame, either. The reader should not leave the story feeling let-down. People like happy endings, but not every story needs to end with the happy couple riding into the sunset.

More next time

#Writing a Novel, part 3

 The book I’m currently writing is a contemporary novel, a detective story, featuring a PI by the name of Lews Canon. It is a not-so-serious story, written in a light-hearted style. Sure, there will be some action, some violence, after all it is a detective story, but mostly it will be filled with humorous dialogue.

I wrote the first few pages quite some time ago, but it never went anywhere. In fact, the main character was Mark Canon, not Lews Canon. I changed the name later on, because it made more sense having him named Lews. It fit much more to the theme and style.

Sound it out and you may get an idea of what I’m talking about.

After reading those first pages, I thought they may make a good story, but what would I write? So I actually made a character sheet of all the characters I mentioned in those few pages. I even developed backgrounds for them. Then I wrote some more, then I made an outline of a story. Of course, as I’m writing, the outline changes, the story may take a different road, but at least I do have some sort of guide.

This one is written in the first person. Lews Canon is telling his story. As a writer I have to become Lews Canon. I have to experience in my mind what he experiences. I know what he thinks, but I don’t know what the other characters think. I will never know, unless Lews Canon is a mind reader. Since this isn’t SF, he isn’t. He’s just a normal man with normal abilities.

Should I, for some reason, decide to write a chapter featuring one of the other characters, I could also write that in the first person, but then I wouldn’t know what Lews Canon is thinking.

So, as you can see, there are certain rules when writing a story.

Third-person limited omniscient

When writing in the third person, the same rules apply. When we follow the main character, we have to write from his/her perspective. We also know what (s)he thinks but not what the others think. It is called POV (Point of View). Many writers don’t seem to understand this principle. They will jump from one character’s thoughts to another, sometimes in the same paragraph. It is also known as ‘Head-hopping’. It is not a good way to write, because it can become confusing to the reader. It is not difficult to write with only one POV, even though some writers think it is. It takes a bit of discipline but can be achieved.

Omniscient Mode

There is another style where the narrator of the story knows the thoughts of every character, like a god, who knows everything. It is called the ‘omniscient mode’. Some writers write in that style. I don’t really care for that way of writing. It is head-hopping at best and can become quite confusing. One never knows who is featured. The story becomes impersonal and as readers we can’t identify with any of the characters.

More next time

#Writing a novel, part 2

As I said in the beginning, there are no set rules when writing stories or poems, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t any. What I mean is that there are no rigid rules, but we still have to follow a certain road, otherwise we’d end up with a jumble of words and sentences that may not make much sense. There has to be order in anything, even in writing.

Obviously, we need a beginning and an ending. The beginning should give the reader a taste of what’s to come, wet their appetite for more, and the end has to tie things up. Of course, we can end with some kind of a cliff-hanger, which is needed in a series, to entice the reader to buy our next book. But it is not a good idea to end a book in the middle of a scene to be carried on in the following book. Readers do want some closure.

As we grow in our writing, we will try to experiment with different styles and different procedures. We can do that, because there are no set rules that we have to follow.

When I write Science Fiction/Fantasy I usually don’t know where I’m headed with the story. I let the characters guide me, I let them follow the way they want to go on their adventure. I follow the story as it develops. Once I’m deep into the story I will begin to flesh out the characters, their backgrounds, and I will develop the environment in which the story takes place.

When I wrote the novelette ‘Outpost Epsilon’ I wanted to write a story about an outpost on a planet populated by dinosaurs. So that was the premise: a planet full of dinosaurs and an outpost, but I didn’t have a story. Then I created a guy by the name of Terrex Stonewall. I didn’t know who he was. For now he was just a name, who became a man, who was a scout in the Solar Union. He landed on the planet I called Epsilon to join other scouts who lived on the outpost. Their job was to watch for intruders into this alien solar system. And the story developed from there.

I had no idea at the time, that I would write a trilogy called ‘Lizard World’ three years later. Who knows, I might write another book or two that will take place in that same universe. I say ‘universe’, because in the process of writing the trilogy I had to create a whole universe filled with alien races, giving me new ideas for more stories. And that’s how novels are written. They may begin with an idea, a word, a sentence. One never knows what develops from there. All we need to do is give our imagination free reign and follow the adventure.

In my early days of writing I wrote strictly for my own amusement. I didn’t care much about political or moral correctness. I knew nobody would ever judge me about what I wrote, because nobody but me would ever read it. However, I did worry about correct spelling, grammar, and the correct meaning of the words I put on paper.

Once I began writing to be published, that did change. Even though I wrote stories with erotic content, I needed to be careful what I wrote and how I wrote it. I also needed to follow the rules of my publisher. When you write for the public, you must follow those rules. Certain subjects are taboo. Certain words may be taboo.

More next time

#Procedures to follow when writing a #Novel

There are  no set rules that need to be followed to write a story, a novel, or a poem. Sure, there are plenty of books written on the subject, some of the authors have set themselves up as authorities on the basis that their books have sold many copies, millions, perhaps. They’ve made up their own rules, other authors may copy those rules, change them around, and make them their own. If there are many of these books around, those rules may become the standard on writing a story. They tell you that a story must start with a certain scene, you’ll have to capture the reader’s attention by such and such a page. After that the story has to develop according to an almost rigid pattern.

They will tell you that before you even start writing your story, you must have a layout, your characters must be developed with backgrounds of their lives, and you should know what happens in each chapter. It is even almost mandatory to know the end of the story. Then you start writing and with all this preliminary work your story will almost write itself. There will be no surprises, no straying off the rigid road you have developed with a logical mind. Everything will make sense. I call this formula writing.

Well, that doesn’t work for me, and, I’m sure, for many other writers, seasoned or just budding. Every writer has to find his/her own style and develop a personal method. A good story requires a fertile imagination, a good command of the English language (or whatever language you'll be writing in), and a writing style that captures the attention of the reader.

I find writing Science Fiction and Fantasy more interesting and more enjoyable than any other genre, because I never know where the story goes. I usually don’t  have a character sheet or a skeleton draft of what will happen, because I don’t know. I may have an idea of what the story will be about or I may not. I might just have the name of a character, who may end up being the main character. I will write a word, a sentence, a paragraph to get the creative juices flowing. With every new paragraph may come a new idea. The first chapter will begin to take shape, and even then I still may not know where I’m headed. But deep inside me, like shards of memories, ideas will begin to form and develop. The words will begin to flow from my fingertips and I will start to immerse myself into the world I’m creating in my mind. Every sentence may bring new revelations and new adventure, and finally, I’ve written the last sentence. The whole process takes months, in some cases, years. It all depends how much time I have to devote to my writing.

Writing Science Fiction does not require much research. I can create worlds and places, because they don’t have to exist in real life. I can shape them into anything I want. I can create my own version of history. That is not the case when writing a contemporary novel. It is important to have correct dates, correct history, real places. In my trilogy ‘Web of Conspiracy’ I even checked out the weather on the dates and in the cities I mentioned. I also made certain that the dates and names of days corresponded. It did take quite a bit of research to find that out. I also needed to study up on places in the Middle East where part of the story took place, and certain historic dates, like the Gulf war and other events. It is amazing how much you learn doing that kind of research. I downloaded maps of Iraq and other places. I even found quotes from the Koran or Qur’an (I didn’t know it was spelled that way). Everything can be found on the internet.

While writing ‘Bullet of Revenge’ I needed to find information about the FBI. For instance, I had to make certain they had offices in the city I mentioned, and other stuff. I learned a lot of things I didn't know before. It is important to do this research. Readers will quickly find out if a writer hasn’t done his (her) homework.

Every genre does require a different method. When writing a murder mystery it may be important to know the ending. I say ‘may’, because even that can change as the story develops. With the introduction of new characters new ideas also pop up. Of course, that is the case with any story.

More next time.

Hello 2014

Happy New Year