What advice would you provide to someone who is starting to write a novel?

Question

In terms of writing...
In terms of ideas...
In terms of style...
In terms of effort required for such a task...

Answer 1

First you have to get short stories published in literary journals to build up your credentials. An agent or publisher is not going to even glance at your work unless you have been published and recognized as a writer by others. Given that there are two thoughts to writing: one is style the other substance. Those who write well pay more attention to style, like Hunter S. Thompson, those who think well pay more attention to substance, like Toni Morrison.

Answer 2

First, if you're not already a professional writer, don't expect the first novel to sell. You need to write about a million words or so (seriously) until your writing will be up to professional standards. And that's not writing "in a rut", that's working hard to make each new page better than the last.

In terms of ideas, surprisingly, you don't need great ideas to put together a half-decent novel. Getting the words down right is more important. Of course, good ideas make anything better, and great ideas could be the genesis of a great work. Try to not look at the same things the same way every day...go beyond and discover new things, even in the mundane. On the mundane level, you could say, "Oh, those two birds are building a nest". But going beyond, you could say, "There have been a pair of warblers in that tree every year since my grandfather was a boy. But not this year - this year, the jays have taken over!"

Style - learn to obey the rules of good grammar and spelling first. Write stuff that even your stuffiest old English teacher couldn't criticize. Then, when you can do that blindfolded, you can break the rules. Carefully.

Effort - If you can't crank out a couple of thousand words a day, every day, for five days a week, give up and take up gardening. Seriously, if you can get past the million words of learning how to write, you'll pretty much know what you're in for.

Answer 3

Read a lot and find out what style you relate to the best. As far as content goes, that depends on may things like who you are writing for, how much you expect to get paid or work for the love of the art, and of course if you have a story in you. The effort is major, but if you do it by the book (ha,ha) you prepare a loose outline of the whole story, ie how you would describe it to someone interested over lunch, then flesh out the details of some pertinent scenes, work out a list of stuff to research to make the story more detailed and real, then plan a summary of chapters, again loose, as you will make changes, and start writing a set amount a day, say three hours or 500 words to be reasonable, if you are still having fun after a few weeks then see if you can find someone to invest in your project who has some experience, ie a publishing company, they will give you advice on how to write a better book and keep you from starving, if you are any good that is, all they want in return is most of the money, but that is a fair exchange, after a few bestsellers you can expect to write for more money! Good luck. I write short stories and some people say they are good, friends like that are important for a writer.

Answer 4

In terms of writing: try to use many different words and it would be better to have a very good vocabulary!
In terms of ideas: Write about what you like too much whatever it is this. Fantasy books are now in fashion.
In terms of style: That depends on the story you are writing. You can't write a love story and write it like you were writing a horror novel.
In terms of of effort:You must be concentrated on the main idea and keep writing but you must also hear advises from other people who are smarter than you. Writing a book is a task very hard with many problems in which you must find a solution. For more information e-mail me and ask me whatever you want. Good luck!!!

Answer 5

First step...decide on a genre
Next step...decide on a target audience
(The hero/heroine should be someone the target audience relates to)
Third step...create characters, get to know every intimate detail of their lives
Fourth step...outline a story, and decide what POV characters you will use. The number of POV characters is fewer for a shorter book. Sometimes you can simply have a single POV character. This assumes third person narrative with various points of view, when you get in a character's head, make sure the narrator never adds things that the character could have no way of knowing, such as "little did she know, her nemesis was stalking her right outside..."
Fifth step...rough drafts to fill in outlines.
Read heavily in the genre that interests you.
Write, read ALOUD what you have written, and re-write.
Remove all adverbs where possible.
Use only "he said" or "she said" in dialog unless it is super important like "she screamed" (Don't ever say, "she husked" or "she tittered" or any other stupid, moronic dialog tags. And never, ever add adverbs such as "she cooed lovingly")
For ideas, write bunches of wacky "what ifs" and expand them into short stories. For example, "what if an alien landed in my back yard and ate my azaleas?" or "what if I mistakenly got a letter meant for a CIA agent?"
Read the book "The first five pages" by Noah Lukeman
Read the book "The Marshall Plan for Novel Writing" by Marshall.
Submit some work to "The fiction fixer" a program that will analyze your work (google fiction fixer)
Enjoy, good luck

Answer 6

Try to set aside time for writing like it's a job.

Answer 7

in our composition class my teacher said to do the following stage:

Pre-writing
writing a draft
revising then
printing the final copy
^^