How do you write a novel?

[Emilymcplugger]

(You could read the title as a cry for help, I suppose)

I guess this thread is me giving voice to challenges I'm having on my current project and hoping for insight from the experience and practices of other writers here.

It's a little(?) overreaching to say that I write novels. I write stories that are long enough to be called novellas and one published so far that barely bumps the bottom edge of novel-length.

The action in them ranges over periods of years, they feature a relatively large cast of characters, they take place in a variety of settings from chapter to chapter. So, in that sense, novels. On the other hand, they feature barely the armatures of contrived plots to set up chapter after chapter of sex between those characters in different combinations. So, basically, old school stroke fiction.

Anyway, the current book is kicking my butt. It's slower going because the mechanics of the Highly Unlikely Series of Events is more complicated this time. And that jury-rigged barge is then foundering in the shallows of what has always been my How I Write method, which is:

• Sketch out the central events of the opening, final, and pivotal chapters before beginning to write prose;
• Write the first chapter;
• Move back and forth through the book fleshing out and adding to major scenes and events as they become clearer to me. This usually means inserting additional chapters and creating new characters in addition to the core characters that I start with.
• Revise earlier paragraphs and scenes to match up with new inventions as I go.
• Rinse and repeat until the whole thing is ready to be revised front-to-back.

So the book grows from little islands of prose into continents of scenes bumping into one another to form chapters and finally the Gondwanaland of a book. It's not, as you can see, a very organized or well-sequenced plan of attack.

It kind of works. Except right now, not so much.

So, do other people write chapter books, whatever you choose to call them? I've read a few from authors in the Hangout that are certainly novellas. Do you plan these all carefully? Do you just know every beat of the plot when you start to keyboard? Or is a lot of it improv for you, too?

I prefer to do it one chapter at a time.

Except when I don’t.

Current exception. Started on Chapter 6.

Did chapters 1,2,3 and then 10.

Currently on Chapter 7 and it’s going fine.

 

[GrushaVashnadze]

I have little to add to the fascinating and thoughtful comments above. My one novel, Alison Goes to London, has 19 chapters, and is now gradually being published on Literotica - though it is already complete "elsewhere". Readers "elsewhere" have commented on how well-structured it is - though I must admit, that structure developed gradually, organically, as I wrote it over a period of a couple of years. My only modest tips, for what they're worth, are:
1. Let the characters lead the plot.
2. Sometimes the best-laid plot plans disintegrate under the onslaught of where the characters have got to. Let that happen, if it needs to.
3. If I'm having trouble getting a plot point to work, but am determined to do so, it may be because I have misinterpreted the character. I may need to go back and rewrite the character a bit, to make the plot go where I want it to go.
4. I try not to think in advance about what type of sex, or how much sex, I want in each chapter or scene. The sex is the style, the setting, the language - not the subject matter. Let the characters lead the plot, let the plot lead the sex.
5. Don't worry about what others think. A novel is a personal "masterpiece" - whether others appreciate it or not. In case of Alison Goes to London, some readers "elsewhere" have thought it too filthy. Others have seen the deeper meaning and logic underpinning it - and that presumably led to it being short-listed for the Clitorides Awards. On Literotica, it is clocking up a few red H's, but not tons: inevitable on a site where "category" means a lot to readers, and the long haul of a novel can be daunting. But "category" is the death-knell of a novel, which should defy category.

 

[Brutal_One]

I can recommend the MV Franklin Book ‘Write a Novel in a Year’. This is the approach I used to take what I had submitted as a chapter by chapter series in Lit. The key idea is to write every day but she covers a lot of decent essentials for actually how to come up with the idea, character creation, dialog etc and covers the editing and publishing. These days there are good self publishing outlets. Smashwords in particular I recommend. If you have the discipline to write 250 words a day over the course of a year that will deliver a novel length piece of work.

I used it as an exercise to start a new story so it made a good start with the 250 words a day discipline. I did get distracted but I am bringing the new series to Lit and will use it to write the chapters and end up with the second novel.

Give yourself enough scope with the early idea and outline to give enough to sustain the full length of a novel. It definately helps though to have a structure with a beginning, middle and end. Developing character back story and interactions and relationships with other characters should give you that breadth. My first novel had over 20 characters. That may be extreme but it did mean I hit the 100k plus word count. The novel too has two parts so that helped with an intervening story period of twenty years between the two parts.

Brutal One