Five Questions to Kick-Start Your Novel

If you’re staring at a blank screen, wondering how to start writing your novel, try answering these five questions…  

1. Which books do you love reading? 

We tend to write the kinds of books we love to read, so you already know a bit about your not-yet-written-novel. It will share some features with books you’ve loved. Can you see a common theme in your favourite books (even if, like me, you forget the detail the minute you finish)?  

I notice that I love books where human lives and relationships are put under a microscope – a group of friends away for a weekend; a long-term friendship tested; familial bonds between parents and children through the years or generations; sibling groups, gathering around an event; a romantic relationship doomed, challenged, stretched to breaking; the gap between what we hope for and what life gives us; the consequences of our bad choices; jealousy, grief, ambition, desire, mortality. I also love books set in a particularly memorable and soul-stirring setting, where the setting almost becomes another character. 

Try writing down the common features of books you love (as I have above) and scribble ideas around it. Let the books you’ve loved water your imagination. Let your reading become your writing.

2. Which emotions feel most familiar to you? 

This is a hard question with a probably private answer, and as we think of writing a novel, we need to be willing to visit the most private parts of ourselves. Yes, we can write a book from our socially acceptable holding-it-all-together self, but our book is likely to grab the reader much more if we dig down to the deeper places.  

Do you worry more than you’d like to? Then perhaps your main character might do the same. Do you have deep-rooted fears you’ve never shared with anyone? Might those fears kick-start a plot? Is there something that makes you furious? Can you unleash that something into your novel? What disgusts you or thrills you? Let us be disgusted or thrilled with you. What makes you cry? It will make us cry too. When a novel is growing inside me, about to burst through, I find I get (and now expect to get) a feeling. A feeling about what the meaning of home might be (book one), a feeling of profound and unspecified yearning (book two), a flash of profound wonder about the beauty of this world which I can’t hang on to or make last (book three), a feeling of deep regret about a teenage choice (book four). All these feelings became novels for me. 

Be somewhere alone where you won’t be disturbed (even for five minutes) and allow yourself to feel whatever you feel. Let your feeling become your writing. 

3. What’s your relationship with time – past, present, future?  

This might sound like a weird question, but time frames everything, doesn’t it? And perhaps the easier question is whether you have a strong interest in the past, and would like to set your novel in an era that has always fascinated you. You’ll need to enjoy research if so.  

Or, would you like the freedom to create a new future? Alternatively, would you rather set your book in the present, or at least within the limits of your lifetime? That’s the first thing.  

But there’s a second thing. Can you take your own tendencies and expand them, intensify them, nudge them in a new direction? Do you have nostalgic tendencies that you can exaggerate and pass to your main character? Might a tendency to rewrite/rose-tint/sugar-coat the past create obstacles and misunderstandings in the plot?  Or are you tempted to miss the present in pursuit of the future? Could your main character trample over the present (and the people in it) in order to fulfil a future (realistic or unrealistic) goal? Could this be part of the plot of your novel? Some over-riding goal or ambition or obsession which causes the main character to destroy all that gets in his or her way? Do you have a tendency to get bored with the present? Can you exaggerate this so it becomes a part of your plot or characterisation? Do you find it hard to plan ahead? Can you dial this up into a kind of phobia? How might it affect your main character’s life? Could a refusal to look ahead taint or even destroy what the character most values? 

Notice your own relationship with time, and let it bleed into your characters’ lives.

4. Which places have had an impact on your life? 

For me, the setting of my novel is crucial, and even when a feeling is growing inside me (home/yearning/wonder/regret), it doesn’t become a story until I know where it’s set. The settings for my first three books came very easily: my beloved southern Spain – the Cádiz coast and the city of Córdoba – followed by two fictional Northumbrian islands and the Norfolk Broads.  

But for book four, I couldn’t find the setting until I had a conversation with my husband about the places that had meant the most to me. Suddenly, bang, there it was: Mudeford Spit, in Dorset, a finger of sand surrounded by ocean and attached to land at only one end. The feeling that was already forming in me (regret/the consequences of a bad choice/the possibility of redemption) joined with the setting of the spit, like the sperm and egg (!), and the main character was born, carrying her story with her.   

Can you feel your setting coming into focus? If not, write a list of places that have made an impression on you across your life. 

5. What do you know that nobody else knows? 

Reading a lot helps us write well. No doubt about it. We hear the music and the rhythm in the words other authors write. We marvel at the twists and turns of their plot. Our job is not to copy our favourite author or favourite book, but to be inspired by them.  

If we try to copy, it follows that the best we can be is second-best. But if we allow ourselves to be ourselves, which is what all these questions are about, we will be the best. The best at being the writers that we are.  

Immediately, you may hear a voice in your head saying that you’re not interesting enough, or your life isn’t big enough, that being you won’t qualify you to be a novelist. But it will. We all have a particular character and a particular past and a particular present and a particular set of circumstances. We all feel things in a particular way. We all know things: how to tie knots, or make elderflower wine, deliver a baby, put up a tent, crochet a hat, forage for mushrooms. We all have passions and obsessions and niche bits of knowledge.  When we combine these with our own unique character and circumstances, the books we’ve read, the emotions we feel, the places we love and the way we experience time, then this combination will give us our story, and our voice. And because we are all human, readers will respond to our humanity, and dare to think and feel things they’ve felt and thought but couldn’t articulate… or be inspired to think and feel new things through who you are and what you will create. 

Write a list of your niche stuff: themes, topics, hobbies, people, eras, space, nature, countries, jobs, skills, gifts, experiences. Things that have marked your life in some way. Allow them to feed your story and give it your unique signature. 

Joanna Glen is the lead tutor on our Novel Writing For Beginners course. Want to hear more about it? Fill in this form and we’ll send some information direct to your inbox, or visit the web page to get all the details you need.