How to Start a Novel from Scratch
Episode 413, Sep 13, 04:01 AM
Episode 413: Five things to do to prep for a season of drafting (NaNoWriMo or not)
Is it time for me (this is KJ) to start a new novel? Not quite-quite-quite, but that time is coming. There’s a decent chance that the novel I’m working on now will be finished, in the now-we-try-to-sell-it sense, soonish. And that will take some time, and maybe it won’t happen (I know, you think I’m just saying that but no, it’s really quite possible). Even if it does, at some point very soon that will be out of my hands for long enough to start working on something new—and if I’m lucky, that will co-incide with November and National Novel Writing Month, which is my favorite time to write a 55K word draft that probably will contain approximately 1737 words that end up in an actual novel but that seems to be part of my “process”. I think my process is a raging dumpster fire but out of the ashes arise books so fine, this is how I do it.
First, I’ll need an idea. Jennie Nash and I recorded a whole summer about “Ideating” (Episodes 366-373—The Idea Factory). I’d argue that this is possibly the most important part. Sarina and I have a partially joking saying: Friends don’t let friends write books without hooks. But an idea is a multi-part creation. It’s not just a hook, it’s not just a premise. A premise is vampires that feed only on people descended from the original crew and passengers on the Mayflower, and maybe that’s a hook as well. It’s not an idea until we know why it matters, and who it matters to within the book and why it might therefore matter to readers.
Honestly, I’ll probably get that second bit wrong to start with, but you have to start somewhere. Right now, though, I don’t even have the first bit. Maybe you don’t either. Maybe you have an idea noodling around inside you, or more likely fifty. Maybe you can mash some of them together. Maybe they’re all amorphous or flimsy or when closely examined take place in a world or mood that you don’t want to live in for the next couple of years.
But you have to pick one and see where it goes. I started this thinking I could help with that, and now I’m not so sure. I mean, I have a plan. I know what I am going to do, or what I think I’m going to do, but it’s hardly a step-by-step formula for success. It’s going to go something like this:
First, I’ll need an idea. Jennie Nash and I recorded a whole summer about “Ideating” (Episodes 366-373—The Idea Factory). I’d argue that this is possibly the most important part. Sarina and I have a partially joking saying: Friends don’t let friends write books without hooks. But an idea is a multi-part creation. It’s not just a hook, it’s not just a premise. A premise is vampires that feed only on people descended from the original crew and passengers on the Mayflower, and maybe that’s a hook as well. It’s not an idea until we know why it matters, and who it matters to within the book and why it might therefore matter to readers.
Honestly, I’ll probably get that second bit wrong to start with, but you have to start somewhere. Right now, though, I don’t even have the first bit. Maybe you don’t either. Maybe you have an idea noodling around inside you, or more likely fifty. Maybe you can mash some of them together. Maybe they’re all amorphous or flimsy or when closely examined take place in a world or mood that you don’t want to live in for the next couple of years.
But you have to pick one and see where it goes. I started this thinking I could help with that, and now I’m not so sure. I mean, I have a plan. I know what I am going to do, or what I think I’m going to do, but it’s hardly a step-by-step formula for success. It’s going to go something like this:
- Wander the bookstore. Most people buy their books online from descriptions now, but genre still matters. Look at the piles of romantasy (romance/fantasy), the growing tables of horror and horr-antsy (I made that up but it should be a thing). The buy-one-get-one-half-off tables of romance and thrillers, and speaking of thrillers, that’s a pretty broad category that ranges from “your heart is in your throat the whole time” to “huh, I wonder what’s going on here”. Series mystery, which I think is the only thing left that’s really “mystery” and not “thriller”. Pick up a book from “fiction” that’s described right in the cover copy as a “second chance romance” and try to figure out why it’s in one place and not the other. (One Last Shot by Betty Cayouette, which I found by googling what I remembered from the cover copy: book second chance model photographer theo italy. Nicely done, Google.) Sigh, give up, and try not to contemplate whether the world really needs any more books. It does not. But I need to write one, so it’s getting one. #sorrynotsorry
- Play the airport game, which we talked about in Episode 367 HERE). Basically it goes like this: go to an airport (or ask a friend who’s going somewhere). Find the Hudson or whatever your airport general shops are called that has the SMALLEST selection of books. Like, one rack face out. Take a picture and then walk yourself through it and ask, “which of these books is most like something I could have written?” Examine those books closely, asking two primary questions: 1) why is this in the airport bookstore (why do people love it/buy it) and 2) why is it like something I could have written? Then spend your flight, or two hours in a coffee shop, coming up with an idea and a brief pitch for something that resembles each one of those books. You have no more than 30 minutes for each book/pitch, and it must have a title, a logline, rough flap copy, inner and outer plots and a story arc with a beginning, middle and end.
- Do a wild title brainstorm. Sometimes a book just has a great title. Beach Read, Summer Romance, A Star is Bored, Blonde Identity. The last time I made a list of “great titles” I hit one—Romantic Comedy—that someone else has recently used to great success and came very very close on two others. Should you write a book just because you have a great title idea? No of course not, but some great titles could apply to a LOT of book ideas. People are buying the vibe, not the plot, when they buy Brooklynaire.
- Mayyyybe look over your old idea notebooks, if you have them. I have some mixed feelings about this, since I don’t want to let my current idea generating muscle off the hook. But these might also jog something loose. I have my 2022 book out now for this purpose.
- Pick a couple ideas—say three—and noodle them out further. Now we’re pretty much into the whole Idea Factory protocol from the summer of 2022—and that DID end up with me writing one of the books we talked about. So apparently it “worked”.
- That’s my plan. Y’all know I like to set “sticker” goals—a nice thing about this is its flexibility.
Hey writers. I'm Jennie Nash, founder and CEO of Author Accelerator. It's back to school time, which means it's a great time to start training to become a book coach. By this time next year, you could be certified and out there helping writers bring their books to life- even if you're not a published author yourself. Take our quiz, The 10 Characteristics Of a Great Book Coach, to find out if you have what it takes to become a great book coach. Visit bookcoaches.com/characteristics-quiz that's the clunkiest URL ever so let me say it again: bookcoaches.com/characteristics-quiz We'll also put it in the show notes so you know you're going to the right place.