Get Down to Writing No. 2

So now you have thought about what kind of novel you want to write. You've written down a one-sentence idea which goes something like: Grandma was in cohoots with the big bad wolf. 
Where do you go from here? Where do you even start a novel using that idea?
It's not as difficult as it sounds. First of all, in order to get a plot of some sort, you will need to ask the essential question: what if? 
What if grandma wasn't Little Red Riding Hood's real grandmother?
Now you have got the germ of a plot for your story. The next few questions follow logically:
If she wasn't the real grandmother, then who was she? Why do she and the wolf work together? What is her relationship to the wolf? Is he the ringleader or is she?
You could think up a lot of plot lines using that technique. Pick one that appeals to you, let's say you start to answer the first question: Grandma was really the stepmother and pretends to be ill in order to lure Little Red Riding Hood to her cottage where the wolf is lying in wait. 
Why? Because she  wants her out of the way in case she inherits her father's fortune.

Now comes the hard work of writing a 300-page novel based on that plot. There are two popular ways of writing a story.

1. You plan out all the chapters, who is doing what, when and where.
2. You develop the story as you go along - a word of caution here, you have to know where your story is going for this to work. You can't decide at page 110 that Grandma is the "good guy", not if you want the story to be believable (it's OK if you decide it from the beginning so that you can build in clues for your reader)

I use method no. 2 which means that I spend a lot of time writing and re-writng and mulling over where the story is going at any particular time, although I know how it will end.
For example, in the above story plot,  I would know that Grandma gets caught out and that there will be an exciting finish with Little Red Riding Hood fighting for her life. What happens inbetween needs to be written in a way that carries the reader along.
If you use method no. 1,  you will spend a lot of time planing out what is going to happen, chapter by chapter.
Either method doesn't provide any shortcuts to the business of writing.

You don't need to start worrying about what kind of writer you are, any method that works for you is fine. I simply wanted to demonstrate two methods to get you started on that idea in your head.

Every story needs characters. In my next blog I will have a look at developing characters for your novel.
Have fun!

Writing from the Heart

Every budding writer gets told to "write about what you know". We all know something about affairs of the heart so the rest should be easy.  But it doesn't work like that.  Theory and practice are always two different things.  Authors who set their stories in the past or in a future world are writing about what they can imagine.  Imagination is another word for creativity in my book. As long as you don't have heroines in their pretty crinolines taking a taxi to a neighbour's dinner party you are on the way to being credible. In fact, writers of historical novels have to do a great deal of research. The same goes for novels set in the future. They have more than a basis in current scientific developments.

Do you always need to do a bit of research before you write a novel? When I wrote Spate of Violence I was writing from my experience gained in the community I lived in at that time. None of the characters in it are based on people I knew. But I did know a lot about the darker side of urban crime.  For a few years I worked as a volunteer for an organisation which helped the victims of crime. This brought me into contact with many different people and their problems. As in all my novels, Spate of Violence is based on the "what if".  What if some outraged citizens decide to form themselves into vigilantes? It is not a moral judgement on society it is just a story from a few different points of view. I hope my readers enjoy it.


 Link to Amazon.com if you want to have a look.
Available from all Amazon sites as a Kindle e-book.