Planning that novel

We had a good week last week: a flood of good replies, both in relation to “What do you want from writing?” and in relation to our Planning Your Novel module (which is the first lesson in the How to Write a Novel video course and completely free: access it here. You can still do the assignment and get feedback too.)

And –

I always learn something from this work. Last week was no exception.

There was a tremendous amount of interesting work in response to the Planning Your Novel assignment (you can see people’s work here.) And look: the entire point of this module and this assignment is to encourage a kind of safe play. You need to sketch out your idea for a novel, so you can see it and feel it – and change it.

In that sense, if someone gives me a page from a completed draft and I see obvious ways to improve things, then that page has weaknesses. It contains mistakes. But if someone gives me a sketch of an idea, then it can’t contain mistakes. Its job is just to exist – to make itself available for inspection. If you instantly see a way that the idea could be improved, that’s perfect. The sketch has done its job.

The planning process is always circular (plot, characters, settings, themes, plot, characters, settings, themes …). And it’s experimental. Would this story work better in Sweden? Yes? No? Or kind of? OK, so maybe not Sweden. What about Iceland? Or Greenland? A village set up to support oil drilling on the Greenland west coast? Better?

The fact is that you don’t get to the right ideas unless you give yourself permission to have the bad ones. And the bad ones don’t properly exist until they’re written down. You need to see and feel the plan taking shape in front of you.

So – no criticisms in what follows. Just observations.

First:

The pitch matters. Always.

Place your ingredients on a page in their barest, simplest form. Do you want to read that book? Would other readers want to read that book – remembering that your book will be sat next to hundreds of excellent books by authors much better known than you?

Look at these pitches:

Paleontologist + Murder + Theft of dinosaur bones

Jane Eyre + Lesbian romance + more enlightened approach to mental health

New intelligence agency + Run by women + New international crime

Now, I don’t know about you, but the first of those is obviously commercial. A murder story revolving around a niche-but-real area of crime, and one that’s of obvious interest? Yep. That works.

The next two pitches are (for my money, but you may think different) almost but not quite there.

Jane Eyre + lesbian romance: yes, perfect, it’s almost what the book is asking for. Adding a romance like that feels like an act of completion more than anything. But I got shivers of the wrong sort from the enlightened approach to mental health bit. I mean: yes, let’s in practice treat the mentally ill well, of course. But novels that have a “wouldn’t it all be better if we were nice to each other?” tone seldom make good reads – and agents and publishers know it. Now, I don’t think that basic idea needs a whole lot of tweaking to be right. I’d just want to scrub away any trace of the too-worthy from the pitch.

The last idea: yes, I’m intrigued. But the ‘new international crime’ doesn’t mean anything to me. And why is a women-run intelligence agency even needed? What’s the bigger idea underlying its creation? Again, I’m halfway there, but – if I were the author – I wouldn’t embark on writing the book until I’d got some decent answers to those questions.

Second:

Density matters. Almost always.

I came across at least two really interesting examples from your work:

One involved a couple running a teashop in the North of England, but involving some kind of story involving Welsh dragons. Now that’s potentially a nice contrast – the homely teashop, the wild dragons. But why separate them geographically? Almost certainly the book gets better if the teashop is relocated to the Cambrian mountains where (as everyone knows) the world’s best and most ancient dragons still live. The book gets better because, even when you’re in the teashop, you’re still in a location where the possibility of dragons exists. You’ve given every object in the teashop world some kind of ambiguity. Is this only a teacup? Well, yes, maybe, except that beneath those mountains outside lie dragons, and so nothing in this world is ever quite ordinary. If the dragons are a four-hour car journey away, you lose that sense of ambiguity. The book has lost just a splash of energy.

Another example: someone sketched out a novel running from the 60s to now about a mixed-race marriage in the UK. Now, there’s obvious interest there, but the story (as sketched and at least to me) felt a bit baggy – without obvious journey. That doesn’t work. So an author has roughly two choices. One, focus in on a particular time and place. Early 60s? The era of the Beatles and the miniskirt? A mixed-race marriage, with the couple based somewhere not obviously cool (ie: not Carnaby Street, London)? Yes: that clearly works. A lovely retro period feel combined with the iron tang of racial cruelty and complexity? Perfect.

The other way you could justify a 50-year stretch is by giving that journey some kind of purpose. Let’s say the couple has a daughter who goes wild – rejects contact with the mother – before reuniting as the central couple reaches old age. That way, the book is, on the surface, about the mother-daughter relationship, even though in practice the book will also study the evolution of race-attitudes in the UK.

In any case, density nearly always matters.

Geographical density. Density of relationships (a cast list that looks much the same by the end of the novel as in the first quarter). Density of time. When planning a book, it’s nearly always a good plan to close up gaps where you can.

And third:

Darkness matters, nearly always.

There was one planning assignment offered by a more experienced writer with an intriguing idea at its heart – a car crash, a ‘brother’ who’s really a son, a commune, some mental health strangeness. But … who or what was the antagonist? What did the whole story lean up against?

The writer was aware of the issue and had some (perfectly reasonable) hesitations about the exact solution I offered, but … darkness matters. Some external darkness is nearly always important. Even in what is a elegant and morally centred comic romance – Pride and Prejudice, for example – the shadows are present. (The family’s potential poverty. The potential destruction caused by the Lydia Wickham elopement.) That book without those shadows? Basically inconceivable.

So.

Pitch. Density. Darkness.

And plan – revise – plan – extend – plan – revise …

If you haven’t yet joined our How To Write a Novel course, you’re missing out. The peer feedback is abundant and excellent. Always encouraging, always thoughtful. Premium Members can just register here for free. If you’re not a PM, you can always join us.

FEEDBACK FRIDAY: How to Write a Novel / Module #2 / Character

Watch this video (available to Premium Members)

Do your assignment: Give me a 250-word scene that shows a rich, rounded character – we’re looking specifically for inclusion of multiple dimensions in the one scene. 

Everyone is welcome to take part and upload the result to Townhouse here. I’ll see you there. 

Til soon.

Harry