I've written loads of short stories and expanded into articles and poems, yet I haven't even attempted a novel. I want to try doing one but need advice on where to start. Thanks in advance :)
I've written loads of short stories and expanded into articles and poems, yet I haven't even attempted a novel. I want to try doing one but need advice on where to start. Thanks in advance :)
Wow ! reading these other posts makes me realise how disorganised I am. Although I do have a plan and I agree with Ritesh about having an ending my plan is often very sketchy and for the most part carried in my head. However I do have some of it in the form of character names and relationships, place names etc written down. I have also found that keeping a list of page numbers where characters appear helps me to refer back to something that occurred or was said that I want to recall.
Some of this maybe partly because I am writing the second of a series sci fi / fantasy novels which may appear not to have any easy fixed point of reference but also because it has been born out of an idea which is just to big for a short story.
Thank you both for your advice its really appreciated :') I'll carry on wit shit stories etc for now and wait till I feel a spark saying this is your novel :)
Victoria
It sounds like you might need to develop a bit more of a plan for what your story will do...
AAAARGH! I can't believe I just said that! ;-)
I am not taking the mickey when I say that Adrian will be far better able to advise you on that than I ever will be...
However -
one reason that stories only get so far - and I have experienced this with a lot of my own efforts - is that - there just isn't anywhere else for them to go.
This "dead end" can be final - sometimes (as I pontificated in the "writer's block" thread a few days ago) it can be because we have let ourselves wander from a main road into a side road that is a dead end... we can try to find our way back and (if we succeed) we can then see where we can get to...
Then again - we might just accept that a story has run its course for now - but - save it... maybe some day (tomorrow or in a decade) the next stage of the story may come to life.
It can also happen that what started out as a small story can later fit into a larger story.
which raises another issue... When a story comes to an end we might have no way to go forward - but - can we go back?
If we can go back we might add in the middle - or even before the start... What happened before the story that we have so far? Where might it have wandered in the middle?
Just to be awkward I will point out that in the middle we can add "back story" of things that happened before the start... and if that doesn't get you confused... ;-)
I think that one thing to consider is to not be in too much of a hurry to have a story... give it time - even years when appropriate.
A story comes from the imagination (even when it is tied to real events to some degree) - and the imagination is not a machine for churning out material... it needs time.
:-)