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Write
a Novel.
by
Nick Thorne
I
thought I 'd try to write a novel in 10 weeks. If I was going to do
this I knew that I'd have to be disciplined. My aim was to follow a
structured course that I was reading. It had taught me that firstly
I needed to decide on the theme for the story. I needed to think just
what was my novel to be about? What was my novel's theme? I do not mean
the plot, but the approach or the idea I was going to use. In other
words what is the heart of my novel going to be about? Now I am aware
that some people confuse theme with the story idea, here. But, as Joanne
Reid shows in “How to Write a Novel in 10 Weeks”, a helpful
module inside the “Write Your Way To Freedom” course, they
are simply not the same.
Taking the idea first.
If, like me, you want to write this book then you need to have a good
strong and sharply defined idea for the story you are going to tell.
If not, you will more than likely get writer's block, drying up somewhere
around page 29 or 30 of your book's manuscript.
In order to complete the manuscript you are going to have to be excited
by the book you are planning inside your mind. The story must matter
to you and you would be well advised that the age old adage of “writing
about what you know” may be some of the best advice that you could
take. So we now need to think about what it is we know that could be
made into a novel? No doubt you will find that you actually know quite
a great deal.
As Joanne advises, there is:
- One's own personal experience
- Our actual experience
- What-if personal experience
- Philosophical conclusion based on our experience
- History
- Something that we heard about
- Chance incident
- A suggestion from a friend
- Strong feelings against something
- Strong feelings for something
- Current events
- Desire for adventure
- Strong interest in some business
- A new invention
- Social upheavals
- Desire for adventure
Setting up Basic Conflict
Having read Joanne's list I went on to consider the basic conflict.
All books of fiction need a basic conflict. To establish this conflict,
we must have two things, namely: a protagonist (or protagonists) and
secondly, an environment.
In the parts of the course I learnt that the environment could come
from (1) the physical setting(s), or (2) the atmosphere caused by the
social situation, or even (3) the emotional mood.
Setting the Stage
The module teaches that the novelist should put the protagonist(s) in
conflict with either his or her own environment, or the environment
of others. We are given 10 principles for placing the protagonist in
conflict:
1.Moving the protagonist from one environment to another
2.Something changes in the environment
3.Put the protagonist in an environment that is in conflict with other
environments
4.Give the protagonist an environment to conquer
5.Put the protagonist in an environment he or she wants to change
6.Put them in a environment they want to escape from
7.Put the protagonist into an environment where he or she is not wanted
8.Put the protagonist into an environment for which he or she is unsuited
9.Change the status quo of the protagonist in his or her environment
10.Change the status quo of the environment itself
Joanne explains to her students that we must give our protagonist a
chief motivating force with a tangible object. Their response to the
environment will yield a determination to do something about it in order
to achieve a tangible objective. This will be the chief motivating force
in the book. It may also help, we are told, if we exaggerate the reaction
of the protagonist to their environment.
It is essential to have an idea of what the conflict will be before
we begin plotting or novel.
Theme:
There are many places to look when searching out ideas to use for our
novels. Once we have an idea we must concentrate on the overriding subject
matter of that idea. We must also try to understand your own attitude
towards it and this attitude needs to be strong and clear.
As an example: I am considering writing a novel about Admiral Lord Nelson.
The main subject matter was an ordinary young man who joined the British
Royal Navy as a lad and who was sea-sick almost each time he went out
to sea. And yet he was to become a master of military tactics and a
hero to the British nation. He still captures the imagination of millions
of folk to this day. I want to display that people need a hero for their
own personal reasons and so this is to be my attitude in the book that
I shall write. The next stage for me is to come up with the approach
that I shall take. My reason for why I want to write this book. I shall
need, for this, a statement of purpose to make clear my approach to
the subject.
My purpose in writing about Admiral Nelson will be to prove that we
all need heroes so much so that we are willing to overlook any of our
hero's flaws. The theme that I shall peruse will be fame and my approach
to fame is that, in our society, people need fame so badly that they
will put certain people on a pedestal notwithstanding the failures that
the hero may have had. In the Admiral Nelson's case, it is a literal
statute on a column in London's Trafalgar square. He was undoubtedly
a great man, but like us all he still had negative character traits.
I am following the Write
Your Way To Freedom module on Writing a Novel in 10 Weeks to help me
achieve this aim. So I shall firstly be assessing my idea to see
if it is strong, next I will consider what the basic conflict is to
be before setting the stage and lastly working on the theme.
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