So you want to write a novel? Great!
But what kind of novel?
This question is the first thing you should ask yourself after saying, “I want to write a book.”
This initial decision will define your next 2-6 months, your possible fan base, and your future as a writer.
The Story comes first
Firstly, consider your story. What story are you trying to tell, at the very core of the novel, and to whom? It could be about discovering oneself, a story of good over evil, or a comment on our times.
Whatever it is, the story is responsible for moving your reader forward, keeping them hooked, and ultimately, for making them feel something about themselves. That’s the secret behind every bestseller – the ability to create emotion in a reader.
That’s why you spend time making sure your story is as compelling as possible.
Drilling down to the essence of your ideas helps a writer understand their story on a deeper level, and how best to tell it. From there, you can assess how to wrap it up and present it. This is where genre comes in.
Genre
Choosing your genre is much more than deciding which section of the bookshop you want your novel to be in.
The genre is the colour and taste of your story, its style, and themes. Your genre also defines your future audience and career as a writer, in regards to who will be reading your novel and who you can market to.
For example, I write crime fiction, family drama and romance stories set in tropical Africa. All my stories are within these genres and my readers know that.
What’s your genre?
Before you write a story, you must know your genre. The genre will define how your story will be structured.
I know a lot of you are confused about what genre means. Let me help you gain clarity.
If you ask many African fiction writers what the genre of their story is, they will tell you they wrote fiction. That’s not the answer. Fiction is just a broad term for all fiction stories. What kind of fiction do you write?
What’s your genre?
Defining your story is the first thing you should do before you start writing. Even when you want to submit your manuscript to a reputable publisher, you have to tell them the kind of fiction story you wrote. Having clarity on this will help you a lot in your writing career.
Under prose, we have literary fiction and genre fiction.
Genre Fiction also known as popular fiction or commercial fiction is written for entertainment. It’s a riveting story that gives us that escape from reality and transports us to another world. These are the kind of stories that keep our hearts racing.
Genre fiction includes many subcategories such as Mystery/Thriller, Horror, Family Drama, Romance, Crime fiction, Western, Fantasy, Science Fiction, Young Adult, Children Fiction etc. Each of these genres has their own rules, expectations and conventions. These are what readers are looking for when they read these stories. If you want to write in any genre, you need to have read many books in that genre. You need to understand the tropes in the genre, including the rules and conventions. I write genre fiction. Like I said earlier, my categories are crime fiction, family drama and romance.
Literary Fiction separates itself from Genre Fiction because it is not about escaping from reality, instead, it provides a means to better understand the world and delivers real emotional responses.
Literary Fiction is more difficult to classify or break apart into subcategories. To put it simply, Literary Fiction is anything that does not fit into a genre.
Yes, we know your story explored the ills in our society but what kind of story is it? What kind of fiction do you write? This issue becomes most important when you begin submitting your work to publishers. Some publishers embrace certain genres, while others don’t. Publishers usually specify the kind of fiction stories they accept in their submission guidelines. Now, if you know the kind of fiction story you write, you will be able to know the right publisher for your story.
Most writers will have an inkling of which genre they want to write in. However, if you don’t, or you’re open to suggestion, the great news is that you can choose whichever genre you like!
You just have to think about three things:
1. Which genre would allow you to tell your story at its best? For example, would advanced technology help you tell your story? Maybe think about science fiction. Are peril and viscera more your thing? Go for horror, or dark fantasy. Is your character solving a crime? Go for crime fiction. Are you writing about two people meeting and falling in love? Go for romance.
In which genre do you feel confident writing?
2. Most genres have certain stylistic markers, for example – present tense and first person are common themes in Young Adult Fiction. I always recommend going for a genre that you like to read, as you’ll know it well and be passionate about it.
3. Do you wish to be commercial or just more
for fun? While you can choose any genre you want, some will be more popular, and more lucrative, than others. If you intend to write a bestseller, you can’t afford to go incredibly niche with your genre. If you're writing for enjoyment, then you can do as you please!
After you’ve chosen your genre, it’s time to decide who you’ll be writing about.
Create your characters
Designing characters
Characters, whatever form they come in, should be:
relatable,
believable,
and consistent.
You want your characters to be somebody a reader feels invested in, either positively or negatively. For instance, they want to see them succeed, or want to see them defeat the obstacles in their way and win at the end.
There are many ways to achieve this. You can take cues from real life people and turn them into characters. Or, you can build them from the ground up – assign personality types, define their likes and dislikes, and dream up their physical appearance.
However you like to work, just use the list above as a checklist to ensure each character is perfect.
What I always suggest is building biographies for each of your characters.
Not only will this help you with consistency throughout the novel, but it also allows you to deepen your understanding of the character, and enrich them. Each feature, each personality trait you add to a character also defines something that a reader can connect with.
We are all complex creatures, and your novel’s characters should be too. When I’m writing a novel, I write about things I know about each major character in my notebook.
When writing your biography, note down aspects such as:
age
gender and sexual orientation
race and place of birth
eye and hair color
clothing preferences
defining features
personal history
resulting personality
habits and quirks
accent or word choices
and of course, purpose
Character purpose
Another golden rule is that each of your characters needs to have a purpose. Everyone on the planet has a purpose. Short-term or long-term, we all want something.
Each of your characters, no matter how minor, needs to have a purpose. It’s how each of these motivations interact, conjoin and conflict that will allow a story to shine – making it inherently human and believable.
From writing character biographies and creating purpose, you will be able to see which characters clash or mix with one another, and that’s how you start to hone in on some of the key moments in your story – places where you can create tension or intrigue.
Next up, we will look at world-building, one of my personal favourite parts of writing a book. This is the backdrop of your story, the stage your characters interact with, and very important indeed.
Build the world of your novel
After defining your characters, it's time to start building your world or setting (Time, place and location). This step is one of the most fun stages of writing, as you get to delve into research and let your imagination run riot.
The first question to ask yourself is whether your novel is set in:
the real world
an older world
or a different world
Real world
For those writing in the real world, it’s going to be a quicker process as much of the groundwork is already done. You’ll be building the microcosms around each of your characters. Their abodes, their workplaces, their environments, and so on. You may find that there is still a good amount of research involved if you’re writing about real-world subjects, technology, or places you’ve never visited or don’t know too well.
Older world
For authors writing about an older world, your process will be heavily focused on research. Writing historical fiction, as the name suggests, is where you blend facts and historical license. What I recommend is building a framework of facts, and whatever you cannot find information on, or wish to change (if you’re writing alternative history), you can fictionalize. Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is a historical fiction set in the past during the Nigerian-Biafran War.
Different world
And lastly, for those of you writing about an entirely different world, it’s up to you. This is for those writing Fantasy such as a novel like Game of thrones. This path requires the most imagination. There is still a little bit of research to be expected, for example, if you’re writing a medieval world and need to know how castles work, but not as much as with real or older worlds.
The next step is to write down all your ideas, notes and research – letting your imagination run free and rampant as you did with your character biographies.
Once all the ideas are out, then you can start paring back. This kind of process is all about deepening your own understanding as well as enriching your novel.
Whatever you come up with, remember that a world needs to be believable, just like characters. At the very least, it needs to be believable in its own context. That can be achieved by adding detail and variety – which we will dive into in the next lesson.
Building a world is not only fun, but it’s necessary for enriching your novel. In this second part of world building, we’re going to look at the individual details you can add to your world to make it rich and believable.
How characters and the world interact
A world should play a part in the characters’ history, their personality, their everyday life, and their future. Take weather for instance. If your world has lethal rainstorms, it will affect your characters’ movements, options, even their continued survival.
That’s why world-building is not only essential to your story but also an opportunity for you to go back to your character biographies and add further detail – to knit them and the world together. Nothing is ever set in stone in the planning process, so have no fear if you feel like changing something.
Inspiration in the real world
The way I enrich my novels is by looking at the real world own translating its individual aspects into my own worlds. Some of these aspects are:
Landscape and topography
Weather
Religion
Creation, history, and mythology
Society
Culture
Transport
Recreation
Employment or business
Military
Technology
Medicine
Politics, rulers or royalty
Depending on what type of world you’ve chosen, this list will tell you what needs to be researched or invented.
I would also recommend using this list as a structure for your world-building notes. You can add any other aspects that you think of along the way.
Detail where detail is needed
Don’t feel you have to cram a detailed description of every aspect of your world/setting into the novel.
You want to tread a line between intriguing and over-burdening. Some aspects will naturally feature more heavily, but don’t feel you have to give the same treatment to every aspect of your world. Only add detail if it adds to the story or develops a character. For instance, if you have a character whose life is defined by religion, then religion and belief will come up quite often.
You can also read the crime thriller, Salvation in Death by J.D Robb, a novel about a priest who died on the altar after drinking wine from the chalice). If the character is vaguely superstitious, you won’t need pages explaining the background of the world’s religion.
Even if it's just a quick mention, a brief nod to a bigger sphere than the plot, it all serves to deepen the world and make your readers' experience more enjoyable.
Even if it's just a quick mention, a brief nod to a bigger sphere than the plot, it all serves to deepen the world and make your readers' experience more enjoyable.
Create a chapter outline
Now’s the time to start putting all of your ideas and notes into a plot. It's the stage where you take your players — your characters, and let them move around the stage — the world.
The easiest way to go about this is to do it chronologically. I don’t mean this as the chronology within your novel, but the order in which you’re going to write the book. Here is where you take all those interesting character interactions and all the details of your world, and let them run with your story. I suggest you create a chapter by chapter outline of your story.
Follow the outline and then write your novel. You can develop the outline as you write and gain more ideas.
At this point, you might find your original idea changing. This is entirely natural. In fact, it’s encouraged.
Changes at this stage might feel major. This is when you should be making the big changes and the major decisions. It’s how the plot grows and thickens, so to speak, and evolves into something altogether more powerful or richer. That way, when you come to writing, all you have to worry about is following your characters over the pages.
Again, what I advise is writing a chapter-by-chapter bulleted breakdown of the actions and reactions that happen throughout your story.
This approach will provide you with a full view of where the story leads and how it ends. It will allow you to chart every dip, rise, and fall of the pace. It also lets you drill down to individual scenes, swapping or strengthening them where needed.
This master plan and your notes will be your buddies throughout the writing process – evolving with you as you write, helping you to stay consistent, and providing you with the ability to see the whole plot in micro and macro detail.
Manage the pace of your novel
Creating a detailed plan of your novel’s plot gives you an excellent overview of how everything knits together.
This master plan is particularly important for ensuring the pace of the plot keeps the reader entertained and engaged. Even a great plot can be ruined by the wrong pacing, whether it’s too slow or too fast, or all bunched up towards the climax — which often happens with a first novel.
Pace can be set using the words on the page, as well as through the structure of the book. Short sentences, punchier descriptions, and short chapters give the sense of a fast pace. Long chapters and detailed descriptions throughout will provide a slower pace.
I believe that intrigue comes from a changing of pace. A book that is fast all the way through leaves no respite for thought. One that constantly moves at a snail’s pace could be too boring. By varying the tempo, letting it rise and fall, or gradually build, makes for a more interesting read.
You can also be clever with your pacing, tricking the reader with a false denouement maybe, or employing a fast-paced scene at the beginning of your novel for hooking readers in – almost every James Bond film uses this tactic.
With the pacing sorted, we’re now out of the planning stage. It’s time to dive straight into the writing!
and perfect your voice
If you haven’t written a novel before, then this will be a critical stage. If you’ve written before, even if just dabbling, it will still be an important step, albeit a shorter one.
It’s a clear and known fact that each author has their own style.
If you’re not sure what yours is, the simple trick is to open up a blank document and putting fingers to keys or write or your notebook. Whatever comes out is your base style of writing — it could be in the first person, present tense, metaphoric, descriptive, or witty. Anything.
Now take a look at the novels of your chosen genres. Look at a range of different titles and see what the norm is – what readers expect. For example, are they written in the first person or third person? Are they fast-paced? Are they abstract or detailed?
From there you can assess whether your natural style will fit with what readers expect and enjoy. It’s especially wise to do this if you’re writing for the international audience which is what I advise.
Now, the important thing is always to play to your strengths. This stage isn’t about scrapping how you write – it’s about identifying areas of expectation and assessing where you could improve, or where you could change something. Even different novels from the same author can have a distinct style, as it’s common for writers to let their voice grow and change.
From this point, it’s all about diving in. Write an opening. Write a first chapter. Test your creative muscle to find out what you can do with it. Then, read your writing back, and whatever sections shine the most, analyze to figure out why. You can apply that to the rest of the novel.
With your style clearly defined, and some practice under your belt, it’s over to you. The novel is now in your hands.
Establish your writing routine
Writing is not easy. The act of sitting down at a desk with a keyboard and typing out prose or writing with pen and paper is deceptively simple. I always say that writing is one of those skills that you don’t know you have until you try to do it. This is why you need to give yourself space and time to concentrate on your writing, to ensure you’re giving it your full attention.
Time and space can take many forms, but the idea here is to maximize creativity, and therefore output. I don’t mean this just regarding the word-count but also regarding the quality of the words.
It’s hard to recommend an exact solution, as each writer will be different.
What I can suggest is assigning an amount of time to write per day or per week, and finding a place where you won’t be distracted or where you feel inspired to write.
You should also clear some space mentally, by either taking care of other jobs beforehand or switching off from the to-do list before you write.
For me, I write mostly early in the morning and sometimes at night. When I am really serious with my writing, I’d assign 2-3 hours a day, which roughly equates to 2-3000 words.
Simply put, whatever time and space works for you is the right thing to do. Use it to maximize your productivity, and you’ll soon find your novel flying out of your fingers.
Don't edit as you write
Now, this bit of advice may sound strange at first, but I really think it helps maximize your productivity.
I believe there should be a clear distinction between the process of writing and the process of editing. Editing should be a stage after the completion of your first draft and, as such, very separate to writing.
It's natural to want to check your work as you go.
A touch-up here and there, especially when it comes to consistency, is absolutely fine. Sometimes reading through a page before you start can help you get back into the frame of mind from the last writing session.
What I'm talking about is spending precious writing time doing mass edits and rewrites that should come later.
The reason I suggest this is that the two processes require different mindsets. The writing process is all about invoking a flow of creativity.
Editing is all about being critical, sharp-eyed and analytical. Switching between the two frames of mind can be difficult when you're first starting out, and trying to do so can slow you down when you sit down to write. Separating the two process lets you focus on each area individually, giving them your full attention.
As soon as you reach the end of your manuscript —your first draft— that's when it's time to switch mind-sets and become analytical. By then, you’ll have a full and rounded view of your plot, from end to end. From there, all you have to do is read through and polish the manuscript to your heart’s content.
Take the next step in your career
Writing is hard. And like anything that’s difficult, it needs determination and practice to master it.
There will be times during the writing process when you feel that:
you’re not a good writer;
this novel is not a good book;
nobody will like it; or
you’ll never finish it
What’s important to remember is that every author gets these feelings. I get them whenever I write.
Even great authors experience a crisis of confidence, time and time again, even after they have sold millions of copies.
These feelings are natural – it’s doubt born of a desire to create something, and for that something to be good. Doubts like these should never be feared.
Instead, take comfort in the fact you’re not alone in having them.
How to overcome these doubts is much like finding your writing spot – personal and unique to every author.
What I find helpful is rereading my previous chapters or favourite novels, to get that inspiration back. Feedback from friends or other writers can also be helpful.
Motivational quotes, posters, and music can also help you overcome doubt with inspiration and determination. I love cool songs and blues. They help get my back to my writing mood.
If you get delayed with your novel or find yourself too distracted to write, then it’s important not to worry.
Though sticking to a schedule helps you focus, you are allowed to change it. It's okay to skip a few days here and there, should life get in the way. Your only deadlines are yours, and putting more stress on yourself will only make it harder to write.
If you’re still struggling, then focusing on the end goal can also help.
When you put the final full stop on your last draft, or see your book on a shelf, or get your first 5-star review, sticking to it will feel incredibly rewarding.
Writing may be a tough, but if you’ve got a knack or a passion for it, it’s worth persevering and clinging on as hard as possible. As I said, it’s worth it.