Three Key Ingredients to Writing a Novel
If you have difficulty selling your novel, I suggest you ask someone in your critique group, your editor, or someone who can analyze your writing if your manuscript is shy on any of these three key ingredients.
Study what the bestselling novelists are doing. You will find that all bestselling novels are different from each other, but they have three things in common that are often missing in other novels.
1. Well developed characters
Well developed means showing or telling aspects of their personal lives or personalities. Yes, this is a place where telling can be useful. Does your tale reveal your protagonist as a “real” person with a “real” life, going beyond the “bare bones” needed to move the story along? This takes extra time in designing the main characters. Most beginning writers are reluctant to spend that time. Instead they want to rush into the fun part–writing scenes.
For those authors who have characters recurring in different novels, this is critical. When you see a new book out by a favorite author and the protagonist is one you’ve read about before, are you interested in learning more about this person and seeing him in action? You bet.
2. Good story
This seems self-evident, but I’m amazed at how many of my client writers have characters and plots riddled with clichés. Clichés can be useful because they provide readers with something familiar. But in today’s busy world, cliché can mean boring. If you can provide your reader with a tale that breaks new ground, you can stimulate interest in your book. Surprise your reader occasionally. As the poet Robert Frost said, “No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.”
3. Author’s voice
This is a biggie. I’ve had agents tell me that when they read the opening pages of a new manuscript and detect a strong author’s voice, they are more interested. And what is this thing called voice? For bestsellers, it’s the style of writing unique to each writer. It usually takes writing a few books and/or stories to find your author’s voice, but once you have created one, you can move your manuscripts to the head of the pile.
Readers like a novel with a distinctive voice. They feel they’re meeting one on one with the writer/character. It becomes more alive and helps the reader feel they’re spending time with a friend. It helps them suspend disbelief and imagine the characters as seen from the eyeballs of a “real” person.
Almost all beginning writers I’ve worked with write by “describing” their story as if they were behind a camera as the movie unfolds in their head. Get beyond that if you want to be a success. If you elevate your writing with a unique writing “style” or voice, you create a niche no other author can fill. Add personal insights (of the character), quirky comparisons, wit, opinions, unusual descriptions, etc. But remember: the voice must quickly become familiar and comfortable to read. Don’t force an awkward style just to add voice. Experiment.
Give your characters an attitude and a solid personality, and write with bias in your descriptions. Look at things and people with a fresh view and you’ll go a long way to creating your own author’s voice.
Conclusion
It pays to learn from others who have gone before you. As a writer, you must continually break new ground if you want to grow and become more successful. You may have read that it takes ten years or 10,000 hours of dedicated study to become an expert in any field - if you have the basic talent.
That holds so true for novelists. The bestselling authors I read had all been writing for a long time before they reached that treasured New York Times Bestseller status. Learn from them. You don’t have to discover every lesson all on your own. As Daniel J. Boorstin said, “Education is learning what you didn’t even know you didn’t know.”
- Victory Crayne, Independent Editor, Writing Coach, Ghostwriter, Writer, Public Speaker. Email: victory at crayne.com.
Tags: author voice, best selling authors, characters, plot, story, voice
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