Excerpt: How To Novel

Over on my other Patreon, I’m serializing a craft book about how to write a novel (or, more precisely, “here’s a bunch of ideas about a few ways to write a novel that have worked for me”). I’m really enjoying it; I love teaching and writing, so writing a teaching book about writing is a lot of fun. I thought I’d share an early chapter from the book, about getting and refining the idea that will be at the heart of your novel.

I’ve already told you that the execution is the important part of turning an idea into a novel, and you have probably rightly concluded then that it’s possible for any idea to become a novel. The question you should be asking is whether the idea you have is one that you want to turn into a novel.

As we’ve been discussing, writing a novel is a big undertaking. This idea that you want to turn into a novel is one that you will be living with for at least the better part of a year. Some of my friends have been working on their novels for multiple years. And I think a lot of the trouble people run into in the middle of working on their novels can stem from not being sufficiently excited about the idea they started with.

You are the only one who knows whether you’ll be able to sustain interest in an idea for a year. Here’s how I do it: I generally don’t start writing a novel unless I’ve been thinking about the idea for months. If it’s stuck in my head and I’m still exploring it months after I thought of it, then chances are pretty good that it’s going to hold my interest for enough time to get it written.

I’m a character-based writer, and a lot of this book is going to focus on character-centric novels. If that sounds scary or intimidating, it shouldn’t; most Western novels are character-centric these days. There are exceptions: mysteries and heist stories are often plot-centric (the puzzle is the point), and there are branches of science fiction and horror that can be very idea-centric (the effect on society as a whole is the point), but even in those genres you can find examples that focus on the changes a character goes through. Agatha Christie’s mysteries are plot-centric but have characters at the heart of them; Stephen King’s horror is often centered around the extremes of human experience.

But most fantasy novels and most contemporary novels follow a character’s growth through them, or that of multiple characters. George R.R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire, adapted to the HBO show A Game of Thrones, follows the growth and change in a whole cast of characters, weaving that into a larger story about the changes facing the world, but never losing sight of the fact that it’s individual people who shape those changes.

So great, if your idea follows a character’s journey, and it’s something that’s stuck in your brain so you can’t shake it, you just have to write it, then you’re good. If you’re not quite there, let’s talk a little more about ideas.

Personally, I like for my story ideas to have a message, but it’s hard to talk about that aspect of them without sounding like you’re trying to write an after-school special or a Very Special Episode or something. But in cases like those, the plot is the message. It’s possible to have a message conveyed through your story without making the story all about that. A common thread through my stories is having characters find fulfillment through acknowledging who they want to be in the face of a society or family or peers trying to tell them to be something else. In Green Fairy, I also wanted to include the dangers of online relationships, which turned into a theme about being deceived by appearances. In Red Devil, I wanted to write about toxic families. The Price of Thorns, which I’ll be talking about throughout this book, ended up having strong themes of personal redemption and responsibility.

To talk about your idea in those terms is often not very exciting. But those themes are present throughout many of your favorite books, and they are strong ideas even when they’re not the plot of the story. Usually, the message is conveyed through the actions and choices of the hero as they learn to change the way they see and interact with the world. Sometimes (in a tragedy) the lesson is conveyed by the hero failing to change. In either case, it’s worth thinking as you develop your idea about what the success (or failure) of your hero says to the reader.

Now on to the more visible parts of your story. Often, especially with beginning writers, your ideas are inspired by something you love. You want to write “The Lord of the Rings” but with furries, or a trans-friendly “Harry Potter.” This is fine! A lot of artists start out inspired by work they admire. Obviously, you can’t just write “the same story as Harry Potter but Ron is trans,” or something like that, so what do you do with that idea?

You make it more yours. Think about what parts you really liked, and which parts you didn’t, and focus your story around those. The “Fifty Shades of Grey” books famously began as “Twilight” fan fiction, before E.L. James renamed the characters and took the supernatural out of the setting. So if you like the idea of a magic school, you’re not alone (there have been many even before the success of Harry Potter, and there are an order of magnitude more now), but what about it appeals specifically to you? In the case of Fifty Shades of Grey, what E.L. James was interested in exploring was the power dynamic between an older man and a younger woman, and she added her own interest in the BDSM scene (disclaimer: there are better books for exploring the BDSM scene; Cecilia Tan, longtime writer of erotic SF, wrote Slow Surrender specifically to provide a more accurate portrayal of BDSM).

Another type of idea I see often with writers is the Final Scene idea. Inspired by some Final Scene from a favorite work, like the Death Star blowing up^⁠1 (or an iconic scene that doesn’t have to be the final scene—Aslan sacrificing himself at the Stone Table), you set about to reproduce that same feeling with your own story. What was difficult for me in that stage was that I had not consciously paid attention to the character building that led up to that moment and invested the weight of emotion into it. So when I would write my versions of those stories, I took it as understood that we all liked my Luke Skywalker character, or my Aslan character, and assumed all the weight of story that led to that point.

When we get to a novel structure, though, you have to build that weight of emotion, and that’s where a lot of people get stuck. So if you have a Final Scene idea, it’s worth examining it to figure out where its appeal is to you. Which character do you find most interesting? For example, in the Aslan sacrifice scene, are you more interested by the noble powerful figure who sacrifices himself to protect the foolish youngster, or the foolish youngster who is forced to confront the consequences of their actions? The second is a better character to base a novel around because they are learning a lesson, but you can also put your own spin on things. What lesson could the Aslan character learn from sacrificing himself? Do you want that to be the final act in a story, or a turning point?

A lot of this requires learning to read critically, and there’s some difficulty in that. Understanding what gives a story and a scene its power means going back through a text several times, looking at how characters are introduced, what actions they take, what the consequences are, and how their behavior changes after that. How does the author make you care about the scene you love so much?

Learning to read critically is probably an entire book unto itself, and somewhat outside the scope of this one. But it’s a valuable skill to cultivate, whether or not you’re struggling with an idea, and it doesn’t mean giving up reading for pleasure. For me, it necessitates a second read to go back and understand the impressions that a first, casual read gave me. I felt this way about this character, these are the moments I felt were most engaging; then on a second read I go back and try to understand why the prose sparked those feelings. Like examining brushstrokes on a painting, it can show you some of the intention and craft behind the work, and that will give you some background when it’s time to make your own.

So if you have an idea that is a big emotional scene, but is too big for a short story (imagine the Death Star blowing up as a short story, before we truly understood the menace of it or the sacrifices that Luke made to get to that point), thinking back on other works that inspired you to understand how you might build to that scene.

However you get there, you should have in mind something of an idea that will become your novel. It’s important to remember that this idea is a starting point. It’s an entry point to get you started writing your novel. It might be that at the end of it, you look back on this idea and think, “yep, I wrote the novel about that idea.” Or you might think, “oh, the novel wandered quite a bit from that first idea.” Most likely it’ll be somewhere in between. And that’s okay! You don’t know exactly what’s there yet. You just know there’s something that will lead you to a place you want to explore. For now, that’s all you need.

¹ I have been mostly trying to use books as examples in this text, but when looking at stories that inspire writers, movies are a much more common currency these days than books. I imagine that far more of you have some emotional reaction to “I am Iron Man” than to “From Hell’s heart I stab at thee.”