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Writing Excuses 12.40: Structuring a Novel
Oct. 6th, 2017 10:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mbarkerWriting Excuses 12.40: Structuring a Novel
From http://www.writingexcuses.com/2017/10/01/12-40-structuring-a-novel/
Key Points: In structuring a novel, remember Howard bleeding, and use little bits to explore your characters. What makes a novel more than a collection of small incidents? A story that goes somewhere. There is an arc, something changes. Consequences! A thread of progression. What's it about? What's different about writing a novel? Short story readers want an emotional punch, while novel readers want the sense of immersion. Add characters, locations, plot threads, even secondary characters can have their own threads. More perspectives and character arcs. Enough words to evoke the feeling, the emotions, to immerse the reader. Do you build in breaks? Mostly as a secondary effect from building in set pieces. If you make a high point for your roller coaster, you will also make low points. MACE, scenes, plot structure, gaps... then write, and use scene-sequel to give characters time to react, and you automatically give readers time to react, too. Outline plot threads, goals and bullet points, then pick pieces and discovery write a chapter. The breathers come naturally. You may also use a beat chart, noting what emotions you want to evoke.
( The beat goes on... )
[Brandon] Let's go ahead and end here, and ask Howard to give us some homework.
[Howard] Yes. Yes, yes, yes. Okay. Take a film or a television program that was not based on a book, so you can't use Game of Thrones, you can't use The Expanse, you can't use The Lord of the Rings movies. Take a film or a television program that does not come from a book that you like, then, after seeing it or assuming you're familiar with it, sit down and write an outline for it in which you are expanding it into a novel. Not novelizing it, not doing the Alan Dean Foster novelization of Star Wars. No, you are writing the novel that is what this movie would have been if it were a best-selling book.
[Brandon] This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses. Now go write.
From http://www.writingexcuses.com/2017/10/01/12-40-structuring-a-novel/
Key Points: In structuring a novel, remember Howard bleeding, and use little bits to explore your characters. What makes a novel more than a collection of small incidents? A story that goes somewhere. There is an arc, something changes. Consequences! A thread of progression. What's it about? What's different about writing a novel? Short story readers want an emotional punch, while novel readers want the sense of immersion. Add characters, locations, plot threads, even secondary characters can have their own threads. More perspectives and character arcs. Enough words to evoke the feeling, the emotions, to immerse the reader. Do you build in breaks? Mostly as a secondary effect from building in set pieces. If you make a high point for your roller coaster, you will also make low points. MACE, scenes, plot structure, gaps... then write, and use scene-sequel to give characters time to react, and you automatically give readers time to react, too. Outline plot threads, goals and bullet points, then pick pieces and discovery write a chapter. The breathers come naturally. You may also use a beat chart, noting what emotions you want to evoke.
( The beat goes on... )
[Brandon] Let's go ahead and end here, and ask Howard to give us some homework.
[Howard] Yes. Yes, yes, yes. Okay. Take a film or a television program that was not based on a book, so you can't use Game of Thrones, you can't use The Expanse, you can't use The Lord of the Rings movies. Take a film or a television program that does not come from a book that you like, then, after seeing it or assuming you're familiar with it, sit down and write an outline for it in which you are expanding it into a novel. Not novelizing it, not doing the Alan Dean Foster novelization of Star Wars. No, you are writing the novel that is what this movie would have been if it were a best-selling book.
[Brandon] This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses. Now go write.
