As I mentioned last month, I’ve been doing a bit more reading lately on how to write fiction – looking for a few good tips that will make my novel writing life that bit easier (because let me tell you, in case you don’t know, it’s definitely not easy!).

Unfortunately, I find it hard to find how-to books that suit my writing style. I’ve had two out from the library, hanging around on my desk and, well, to be honest all over the house, and I keep picking them up and trying to get something out of them, but just not clicking. The two books in question are From First Draft To Finished Novel: A Writer’s Guide To Cohesive Story Buildingby Karen S. Wiesner and Revision And Self-Editingby James Scott Bell, from the Write Great Fiction series. And they’re by no means bad books, they just don’t suit me.

Wiesner’s From First Draft to Finished Novel sets up the writing process in four layers. Well, there are kind of five, but the fifth is the proposal (I think that’s separate from writing), and the second layer is split into Parts A and B, and … yeah, it seems a little clumsy, doesn’t it?

Basically all her tips fit together to encourage writers to follow her blueprint for creating a novel – the second half of the book is full of Appendices of worksheet-style pages to help you plan and plot your novel, create character sketches, make “formatted outline capsules” and – well, you get the idea. Maybe this appeals to you, if you’re a particularly orderly type. I’m not, and it doesn’t. It might sound like you though – worth having a look.

Bell’s Revision and Self-Editing seemed like exactly what I needed when I first picked it up – I had just completed a novel draft and was ready to attack in again. But I got bogged down in Bell’s acronyms and lists and techniques and … well, all this really good stuff that might suit some other writer, but not me.

For example, he suggests using his LOCK technique for making sure you’ve got a good story: LOCK stands for Lead (a great lead character the reader will bond with), Objective (what the character wants, badly, that drives the story), Confrontation (which is just, well, conflict, right?) and Knockout (the final battle or final choice or whatever makes up your great ending). Personally I don’t think there’s anything original in this concept (maybe Bell isn’t claiming there is), and perhaps it works for some, but I just think it’s reinventing the wheel when the wheel is already doing okay.

Having said all that, Revision and Self-Editing uses a lot of interesting examples and even has exercises to try (with answers, where appropriate) and is worth a flick through to see if it grabs you.

Tags: how to write a novel, James Scott Bell, Karen S. Wiesner

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