This Year You Write Your Novel

As with the metaphor, you should not give your character too many traits or tics. You must choose those attributes, features, characteristics, or qualities that help to define this character—to make him memorable and, to some degree, predictable.

What you must always remember is that the novel is more experiential than it is informational. Your reader might learn something, but most of what they learn is gained through what they are shown about the lives and circumstances of the characters therein.

Most of the details are pedestrian. Why, you might ask, would we want to make the experiences of our character ordinary? Because everyday experiences help the reader relate to the character, which sets up the reader’s acceptance of more extraordinary events that may unfold.

The first draft of the novel may have been written in many different ways (e.g., typewritten, entered on a computer, scribbled in pencil), but now you need a printed version of the book (preferably double-spaced) and a pencil with a fresh eraser. You need a stack of blank paper that you will use to make notes, lists, internal schedules, and longer

A poet must be the master of simile, metaphor, and form, and of the precise use of vernacular and grammar, implication and innuendo.

Many writers, and teachers of writing, spend so much time comparing work to past masters that they lose the contemporary voice of the novel being created on this day.

Other voices are possible. Novels have been written entirely in the first-person plural, told entirely by an unspecified we. Others address the reader as “you” throughout. But these are idiosyncratic and challenging approaches to storytelling.

The simile tries our credulity less than the metaphor; it also creates a weaker image. But the simile allows the reader to see more clearly the two sides of the subject—that which is its normal state and also the image it is compared to.

The awareness of details comes into the novel via the experiences and emotional responses of your characters. Using this as your rule of thumb, you can cut out most extraneous facets in any scene.

My only ritual for writing is that I do it every morning. I wake up and get to work.