This Year You Write Your Novel

In the novel there has to be movement in the personality structure of the main character or characters. This is to say that, in part, the purpose of the novel is to map out the events in the protagonist’s life that cause her to change. This change and the events that flow from it are why we read and write books.

The most common way to avoid writing is by procrastination. This is the writer’s greatest enemy.

Now read your book from first page to last. If you find that you must make pencil markings, correct spelling, add missing words, retool sentences. . . be my guest.

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.

Overuse of metaphorical language will test a novel’s credibility.

The only details that should be put in any description are those that advance the story or our understanding of the character.

descriptions and condensation Any simple act or situation in life is comprised of hundreds of actions and circumstances.

In poetry you have to see language as both music and content.

One benefit of this form of narrative is that the dispassionate observer can, at times, leap from the shoulder of one character onto that of another.