c

 

How many times have you finished reading a novel and said, ³I could have written
that book.´ You know what? You¶re right. All of us, I believe, carry at least one novel
around in our heads or our hearts. Novelist Toni Morrison put it this way: ³If there¶s a
book you really want to read but it hasn¶t been written yet, then you must write it.´
Writing a book is no easy task. Nevertheless, every day another book is published.
In 1996, according to 


 , 1.3 million book titles were in print. The
number of books published in 1996 alone was 140,000 in the United States. So, why
not you?

What you need

I believe that if you can write a simple English sentence (after all, that¶s what Ernest
Hemingway wrote), are alert to the world around you, and want to write a salable
novel ² really want to, not just kind of want to ² then you can do it. I don¶t think
anybody ever became a writer by going to a workshop, reading a book, or even
reading this article. Writing comes from something internal in a writer. However, this
article will save you time, point you in the right direction, and help you write a novel
in 100 days or less.

Possible?
It works. I¶ve done it myself several times.
I know what it means to squeeze in an hour or two a day (or night) of writing. It is
not easy to write a novel, not when you have a full time job, family, and
responsibilities, but it can be done. Most writers, in fact, have had to carry on two
lives while they wrote their novel. But once you sell your first book, than maybe
you¶ll be in the position to quit your day job and devote the rest of your life to writing
full time.

Great writers have done it

Yes, you have a job. Yes, you have a family. Neither have stopped great writers in the
past. The poet Wallace Stevens was a vice president of an insurance company and an
expert on the bond market. The young T.S. Eliot was a banker. William Carlos
Williams was a pediatrician. Robert Frost was a poultry farmer. Hart Crane packed
candy in his father¶s warehouse, and later wrote advertising copy. Stephen Crane was
a war correspondent. Marianne Moore worked at the New York Public Library. James
Dickey worked for an advertising agency. Archibald MacLeish was Director of the
Office of Facts and Figures during World War II.

Drawing from pure emotion

What makes a writer? Perhaps it is a single incident ² one that happens early in life
and shapes the writer¶s sense of wonder and self-awareness.
 Take the case of José Saramago, the first Portuguese-language writer to receive the
Nobel Prize in Literature. The son of a peasant father and an illiterate mother, brought
up in a home with no books, he took almost 40 years to go from metalworker to civil
servant to editor in a publishing house to newspaper editor. He was 60 before he
earned recognition at home and abroad with Baltasar and Blimunda.
As a child, he spent vacations with his grandparents in a village called Azinhaga.
When his grandfather suffered a stroke and was to be taken to Lisbon for treatment,
Saramago recalls, "He went into the yard of his house, where there were a few trees,
fig trees, olive trees. And he went one by one, embracing the trees and crying, saying
good-bye to them because he knew he would not return. To see this, to live this, if that
doesn¶t mark you for the rest of your life," Saramago says, "you have no feeling."
Begin with that pure emotion. Turn it into prose.

 et us begin
Sinclair Lewis was invited to talk to some students about the writer¶s craft. He stood
at the head of the class and asked, ³How many of you here are really serious about
being writers?´ A sea of hands shot up. Lewis then asked, ³Well, why aren't you all
home writing?´ And with that he walked out of the room.
So now it is time for you to be writing.
What follows is your daily log ² each day may have words of encouragement,
advice, or wisdom or a task for you to do to get your book written. It is what you need
to do each day for the next hundred days to write your novel.

·

The great r
  editor and writer, E.B. White, said when accepting the National
Medal for Literature, ³A writer¶s courage can easily fail him . . . I admire anybody
who has the guts to write anything at all.´
On this your first day of writing your novel, make a promise to yourself that you
are going to do it. This is critical. Without that commitment, you may as well save
your pencils and paper. It isn¶t going to happen. Remember, write as often as you can.
That¶s what writers do ² they write.

·

Carve out specific time to write. This is important because over the course of writing a
novel, you¶ll get discouraged, bored, angry, or otherwise fed up, and when you start
feeling that way, you¶ll need clearly defined patterns to keep yourself working.
On occasion you may have to shift your writing times to deal with other demands
in your life, but fight to keep them as regular as you can.
 What do I mean by specific times?
Two hours each morning and each evening, and one eight-hour day every
weekend, for example. Decide how much time you will spend writing each week, and
then do it. Many would-be novelists defeat themselves because they set a schedule but
then don¶t stick to it. Be realistic in the time you plan, and then live by it.

·

In the first week, decide upon the story you are going to write. You might not work
out every detail, but today you are going to begin the process. You are not going to
procrastinate ² procrastination is your enemy. Matisse advised his students, ³If you
want to be a painter, cut out your tongue.´ The time has come to stop merely talking
about writing your novel. Get started planning it now.

·

What kind of novel appeals to you? What really gets your juices flowing? Is it a good
murder mystery, science fiction, a thriller, romance, general fiction?
Alice Munro is considered by many to be the best short-story writer in the English
language. Her books sell about 30,000 copies a year. She is a writer other writers
admire for her technical skills and the purity of her style. She is also known for the
complex structure of her stories. A typical Alice Munro story might begin at a point
that most writers would consider the end, then jump to a time ten years later, then
back again. But what is most interesting about Alice Munro ² who lives in a small
town in southern Canada ² is that her stories are about ordinary people: their secrets,
their memories of acts of violence, their sexual longings.
Think of what to write from what is around you, from what you know and care
about.

·

It doesn¶t matter what kind of book you decide to write. There are no rules other than
that the story has to be very, very interesting. It can be exciting, scary, fun, funny or
sad ² but it must not bore the reader.

·

Analyze and learn. Take your favorite novel of the type that you want to write and
read it again, as if it were a how-to manual for becoming a millionaire. Then read it
again, breaking the book down into sections. Outline the action on large sheets of
paper that you pin to your office wall.

·

Although there are no rules about story ideas, I would offer you one caution: think
small. One of the worst mistakes most beginning novelists make is thinking big,
trying to come up with an end-of-the-world story, in the belief that big is better.
That¶s not true. Keep your story idea small and focused.
Look into your creative soul and search for a little story but one that has real
meaning to you. We are all part of the human family. If you create a story that has
deep meaning to you, chances are it will have deep meaning for the rest of us.

·


Imitation can lead to originality. Do short exercises imitating different styles. Try on a
dozen voices until you find one that fits. Ape the sure hand of a master. But remember
this: write from your own experience. Your experience is unique. As John Braine,
author of r
 , wrote, ³If you¶re to be heard out of all those thousands of
voices, if your name is going to mean something out of all those thousands of names,
it will only be because you¶ve presented your own experience truthfully.´

·

Don¶t be afraid to write down scenes or sections that don¶t lead anywhere. Don¶t
discard them if they aren¶t leading anywhere. Follow the advice of Joan Didion. She
pins them on a board with the idea of picking them up later. Quite early in her novel,

 

, she says, she wrote about Charlotte Douglas going to the
airport. It was a couple of pages of prose that she liked, but she couldn¶t find a place
for it. ³I kept picking this part up and putting it in different places,´ she writes, ³but it
kept stopping the narrative; it was wrong everywhere, but I was determined to use it.´
She finally found a spot for it in the middle of the book. ³Sometimes you can get
away with things in the middle of the book.´

·

Before we leave the problem of finding your story, let me debunk another cliché about
novel writing: Write only about something you know.
You¶re heard that before. It¶s nonsense. Tom Clancy had never been a submarine
commander before he wrote   r . And it¶s a safe bet that
Richard Bach had never been a seagull before he wrote     .
Instead of writing about something you know, you can write about
something you love. It doesn¶t matter what it is, just love it. For
example, Arthur Golden, author of 
 !, had lived in
Japan and was working for an English-language magazine in Tokyo
when in 1982 he got the idea for 
. In 1986, after earning a
creative writing degree from Boston University, he began researching
geishas and discovered ³a subculture with its own strange rules.´ It took
him ten years and several drafts before he sold the book to Alfred A.
Knopf for $250,000.

·

Begin by writing about what you know, if not the novel itself, then something about
the place or people in your novel. It¶s a lot easier to get started on your book if you are
writing about people, places, and things with which you have already grown familiar.

·

Pick your characters first, as they are harder to pick than a story.
When writing, the plot may or may not change, but the characters will develop and
have a life of their own. As your characters develop, they¶ll take on distinct
personalities, and as with good friends, you¶ll know in certain situations what they
will or will not do.
Mystery writer Oakley Hall says that a writer must ³listen to the demands of his
characters, who, as they begin to come to life, may insist upon a different fate than the
givens seem to require.´

·

Get a bunch of 5 by 7 cards and put each character¶s name at the top. Next, think
about the role each plays in your story, and what kind of person each is: age,
education, place of birth, hot-headed, funny, fat, ugly. What are their quirks? Do they
wash their hands 500 times a day? Do they hear voices? Are they kind to kids but love
to torture cats? Put it down, put down so much that you finally come to know these
characters intimately. Alfred Hitchcock would write down his scenes on index cards,
one scene to a card. That way, as he said, by the time he was ready to shoot the film,
he was already done.
Some characters will be major ones, around whom the story will pivot; others will
play bit parts, but these will be critical too, as every player must have a reason for
being in the story. If they don¶t have a reason for being in your novel, they¶ll slow
down the story, and slowness bores readers.

·

Most novels are written to a formula,
especially big best sellers. For example,
John Baldwin, co-author of " 
#$    %
developed a simple formula that he used
to structure his novel.
His ten-step formula is:
1. The hero is an expert.
2. The villain is an expert.
3. You must watch all of the
villainy over the shoulder of the
villain.
4. The hero has a team of experts
in various fields behind him.
Two or more on the team must
5.
fall in love.
Two or more on the team must
6.
die.
7. The villain must turn his
attention from his initial goal to
the team.
8. The villain and the hero must
live to do battle again in the
sequel.
9. All deaths must proceed from
the individual to the group: i.e.,
never say that the bomb
exploded and 15,000 people
were killed. Start with ³Jamie
and Suzy were walking in the
park with their grandmother
when the earth opened up.´
If you get bogged down, just
10.
kill somebody.
 More about formula. When Ernest
Hemminway started as a young reporter
for the Kansas City Star, he was given a
style sheet with four basic rules:
‡ Use short sentences.
‡ Use short first paragraphs.
‡ Use vigorous English.
‡ Be positive, never negative
Asked about these rules years later, he
said, ³Those were the best rules I ever
learned in the business of writing. I¶ve
never forgotten them. No one with any
talent, who feels and writes truly about
the things he is trying to say, can fail to
write well if he abides by them.´
·

Develop your characters and your plot together. You can¶t do one well without the
other. Your characters are not wooden people who just dropped magically out of the
sky. They are critical elements of the drama you are creating. They must do something
logical or illogical (which is what plot is all about) that adds to your story, and moves
it to its ultimate climax. Never, never separate characters from plot.

·

The reader has to believe that your characters exist or could exist ² and they need to
be distinctively drawn. And nothing better defines characters than their actions, their
purpose in life. Their purpose may be good or evil. It doesn¶t matter. All that matters
is that the reader sees their actions and purpose, believes them, and is continuously
interested in them.
Do not write a story peopled with a cast of thousands. Write a tale about one, two
or three memorable characters, all of them filled with purpose.

·

You need a strong protagonist. Most writers have a problem with creating a character
who is larger than life, fully developed, and a consistent protagonist.
Remember, your protagonist is your story¶s major character. This is the person
with whom your reader will identify. You want your readers to care about your
protagonist. He or she is your new best friend.

·


Figure out who you need in the story and what they do together or to one another, and
the story does to them. Are they all pulling together in one direction? Are they pulling
in six different directions? Ask yourself the critical question: Which would be most
interesting to the reader? That¶s the real litmus test of character development and
plotting. Will the reader be interested? Will the reader care?
To be successful in character and plot development, you need to make hard
choices. You need to be ruthless with your characters and your story. Who¶s in, who¶s
out? What¶s in, what¶s out?
Frankly, here is where a lot of first-time novelists stop dead. They can¶t bring
themselves to choose. They become fascinated or paralyzed by the possibilities.
Don¶t you dare do that. Be brutal. Try different choices, of course, but move the
story forward event by event, bringing each character along with you. As each event
unfolds, each character must react to it. Just as they would in real life.
If a child is hit and killed by a car, the driver¶s life is changed forever, the parents¶
lives, the lives of the brothers and sisters, friends, even the crossing guard and
bystanders. You have to decide what the changes are. You must decide. This is your
chance to play God ² and if you¶re going to write you must play that role. God is in
the details, and God decides the course of the novel.

·

Keep asking the question, ³why?´ As you reach the end of the second week of
defining characters, you will have a stack of 5x7 character cards that spell out intimate
details about the personal life of each and every character in your story, down to their
waist measurement and favorite color. The novelist Vladimir Nabokov composed all
of his novels on index cards.

·

Your ³voice´ is your voice. Your ³style´ is your style. Don¶t attempt to ³sound like´
some famous writer. Many beginning writers feel that they have to add something to
their ³voice´ on the printed page. Who you are on the page is who you are in life, just
as sophisticated, just as worldly, or not. It doesn¶t matter. Keep writing and keep
cutting away at the awkwardness that might creep into your writing. Be a natural. As
the French novelist, Francois René de Chateaubriand wrote, ³The original writer is not
one who imitates nobody, but one whom nobody can imitate.´

·

Prepare a rough outline of the story¶s action from Chapter One through to the end.
Novelist Katherine Anne Porter put it this way, ³If I didn¶t know the ending of a
story, I wouldn¶t begin.´
Write down the last paragraph of your novel and put it in the drawer. At the end of
a hundred days, lets see how close you came to following your imagination.

·

Do nothing ² absolutely nothing ² on your novel in terms of actual writing until
your plotting (along with your characters and their roles in the drama) is complete and
down on paper.
Do not fall victim to that old author line: ³I just start out with a basic idea and a
couple of characters. I never know where I¶m going. I let the characters tell the story
for me.´ That may work for brilliant and experienced novelists, but most of us need a
clear road map if we aren¶t going to get ourselves and our readers hopelessly lost.

·

Hang the cards and outline you have developed around your office or room so that
they can be easily read.

·

A well-written page-turner that is more character- than plot-driven and has a clear
beginning, middle and end is what editors (and readers) want.

·

You now have made:
1. a commitment
2. a working schedule
3. a story idea
4. a cast of characters
 5. a detailed plot of the entire story
a short description of what your
6.
novel is about.
·

Set a goal for your self to write at least four pages a day. That is 300±325 words,
double-spaced. Some days you¶ll write one page; others you¶ll write 15 pages. Try to
average at least four pages a day.

·

Your novel is a work of fiction, but that doesn¶t mean your facts don¶t need to be
straight. Nothing turns a reader off quite as fast as a wrong fact. And nothing gives a
story the ring of authenticity like the right fact or detail. Use the Internet for research.
It¶s fast, easy, and inexpensive. Every library in the world is open to you. Look, too, at
magazines and newspapers published at the same time and place as the setting of your
novel.
Gore Vidal used old editions of m  


 for details when writing his
historical novels.

·


Conversation is not dialogue. Dialogue has a purpose. It pushes the story forward. It
keeps the reader tuned in to the story, and makes a person feel at the heart of the
action. Therefore, don¶t describe distant events second hand. Put the reader in the
middle of your story¶s action and your dialogue will sing naturally. Keep your talk
efficient and forceful. And always make certain the reader knows who is speaking.

·

Look into the mirror and write about the person you see. Try and describe the person
you see in the mirror to a man or woman you have never met. Keep the description
under 300 words. Make this ³person´ a character in your novel, either the protagonist,
the narrator, or one of the minor characters of the plot.

·

Novelist Kurt Vonnegut once remarked that, ³Talent is extremely common. What is
rare is the willingness to endure the life of a writer. It is like making wallpaper by
hand for the Sistine Chapel.´

·

Commit yourself to a point of view early in your planning. This way the reader can
get a footing in the story. Once you have decided which character will be the
viewpoint character, stick with your decision. Do not shift point of view. If you decide
on multiple points of view, show the story through one character at a time, in order to
avoid confusing the reader.

·

Carry a note pad with you. If you¶re waiting for a meeting to begin, start writing. If
you¶re on an airplane, start writing. Whenever there¶s a second to write, do it. Once
you have written it down, you own it.

·

Suspense is a basic ingredient of fiction. Because of it, readers ask: What is going to
happen next? They will keep reading to find out.

·

When using characters to present clues, don¶t forget body language. Nonverbal
signals can communicate much more effectively than words. Ask any two lovers.

·

Try writing first in longhand, then on a computer. This will give you two passes at the
prose before you start editing.

·

Aim for one startling image on each page. For example, try and match this image of a
sunrise at sea by Philip Caputo in & :
 A golden shimmer appeared where the horizon was supposed to be, then a red
sun pushed up, like the head of some fiery infant bulging out of the gray sea¶s
womb ² water giving birth to its opposite element.

·

Don¶t overwrite just because technology lets you do it. The mechanics of the
computer and the internet make everything easier, from research to writing to
revising. Keep thinking small. We all think that movies and baseball games are too
long. What about books? Publishers and editors will tell you: context determines
length. Just remember that !! is only 200 pages long.

·


Without descriptions the reader doesn¶t have a sense of place and time and mood ²
all critical for your story. But with too much, your story will bog down and get boring.
Get in. Give the telling detail. Then get out. Don¶t drown in your descriptions (or your
research). Create a world where your characters can live and breathe, but not vegetate.

·

Ideas, new and unique ² that¶s what surprises, satisfies and pleases readers. Stay
away from the tried and true. Write with imagination.

·

Rick Bass, one of our finest stylists, says that fiction writers ² like masons ² require
both power and precision to construct a good story. ³You¶ve got to lay the stones one
on top of the other so they fit together, but you¶ve got to have the strength to lug them
around.´

·

Shirley Jackson, as the mother of four children and wife of a college professor, rarely
had time to write during the day. Yet when she sat down at her desk at night, a story
like ³The Lottery´ flowed out in a perfect first draft. Why? Because she had been
thinking about it all day. Count on your subconscious taking charge and ³working
over´ ideas that come to you during the day.
·

Good characters grow and evolve out of basically two things: their actions and their
beliefs. We develop a sense and understanding of people by what they do and think in
the dramatic events of the story.

·

The Roman poet Horace observed around 14 B.C. that writers should attempt ³to say
at once what ought at once to be said.´ In other words,
c

 
c

  

 







·

Don¶t get discouraged. Keep writing. Remember the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel
i ' by William Kennedy was rejected by 13 publishers before Saul Bellow
intervened on its behalf. In rejecting Laurence J. Peter¶s  %an
editor wrote that he could ³foresee no commercial possibilities in such a book.´

·

Anton Chekhov¶s remarkably simple advice was this: ³If a gun hangs on the wall in
the first act of the play, it must be discharged before the end.´ You have to ³look´ at
the total work with that piece of advice in mind and cut out anything that doesn¶t help
the story complete itself.

·

It is emotionally costly to write well. Dancers, for example, know that they're going to
have bloody feet. Pianists know that they'll have to practice until the pain in their
fingers makes them cry. Writing a novel is not like writing a letter. Writing a novel is
mentally exhausting, far harder than a nine-to-five job. When you write a novel, you
live the lives of your characters.

·

In 1979, at the age of 80, Jessie Lee Brown Foveaux began to write the story of her
life. She wrote innocent tales of her past, tales of her grandmother and of a distant
Aunt Clara who chewed tobacco and could spit in a cat¶s eye.
Every morning she went into the kitchen of her white two-bedroom house in
Manhattan, Kansas, where she had raised eight children. She sat down at the table
and, aided by scrapbooks, letters and photographs, she wrote. Day after day, week
after week, she wrote in longhand the story of her life, noting down the watershed
events: births, deaths, one marriage, three wars, one flood, as well as the things that
just struck her fancy, like the first time she saw Lawrence Welk. Having told the
events of her life, she began then to write about the world that she never spoke of. Her
feelings and thoughts.
Jessie Lee wrote all of this for a teacher, Charley Kempthorne, at his Harvest of
Age, a program for senior citizens. Her writings were published by the local college
and entitled    ' 
 ( )*+, About 30
copies were printed for her family and friends. That was 20 years ago. Family, friends,
and strangers are still reading her 208-page book now entitled  ! -#
 
   '  .# 
 '  

 [Warner Books, 1997].
Since writing her first memoir, Jessie Lee has written two more books. The latest,
! /r
   ' %was published in 1993. That year she
wrote to the teacher who encouraged her to tell her story, ³Thank you so much for not
giving up on me,´ she wrote. ³I am not a writer, but my poor efforts have made a
great difference in my life.´
If Jessie Lee Brown Foveaux isn¶t a writer, who is? Everyone¶s life is a book.
Jessie Lee told her story. And Warner bought her story for one million dollars.

·


Persistence is what is required. Novelist Harlan Ellison once said that if anybody can
stop you from being a writer, then don¶t be one.

·

The gifted writer Jo-Ann Mapson, who has published a half dozen novels, believes
that writers should have a physical hobby. ³Something that takes you away from
books and criticism, because it teaches you, it informs you, and it changes your
writing.´

·

The novelist and poet James Dickey, talking to students near the end of his life, said,
³I don¶t mean to sell the poet so long or at such great length, but I do this principally
because the world doesn¶t esteem the poet very much. They don¶t understand where
we are coming from. They don¶t understand the use for us. They don¶t understand if
there is any use. We are the masters of the superior secret, not they. Not they.
Remember that when you write.´

·

Most successful writers have had unhappy childhoods. Dean Koontz, for example,
was the only child of a physically frail mother and a violent, alcoholic father who
twice tried to kill himself and was eventually committed to an institution. Instability
was a constant in his family. This terrible childhood stirred a passion for books in
Koontz.
One of his very first memories stemmed from a period when his mother was
hospitalized for several months. At the age of 3 or 4, Koontz was kept by one of her
friends, who, every night, would tuck the little boy into bed, give him an ice cream
soda and read him a book. Koontz connected these sensations of safety and happiness
with storytelling. This has stayed with him.
Koontz has read 0  0 ' by Kenneth Grahame at least 50 times,
relishing the theme of ³friends pulling together to overcome the bad guys.´ Koontz
credits books for showing him at the age of 9 that not all families were like his.
³I am a driven adult child of an alcoholic,´ says Koontz. Today he works six days
a week, arriving at his desk by 7:30 a.m. He writes until dinner, skipping lunch.
But what does one do who hasn¶t had an unhappy childhood? Ernest Hemingway
once said that writers have to have had a terrible childhood, or at least think that they
did.

·

F. Scott Fitzgerald said: ³Character is action.´
Characters do not operate in a vacuum. Their actions usually involve other people,
and these interactions are what make up scenes. Full scenes, half scenes, and narrative
passages are the building blocks for constructing a unified story line.

·

During the making of the film "Friendly Persuasion" ² from a novel by Jessamyn
West, West remembers director William Wyler, saying, "We¶ve got to get one more
µWill he? Won¶t he?" into this." As a writer, West tended not to do enough of creating
that tension, which is what readers want.
·

Go to the library and browse through books on food and gardening. Authors of these
books describe smells, tastes, touches, and even sounds in precise detail. When
writing, always mention scents and tactile sensations. Good description observes all
the senses.

·

Select your details. As Mark Twain said: ³Use the right word, not its second cousin.´
Remember that verbs are the strongest parts of any sentences. As Rita Mae Brown
puts it, ³Verbs blast you down the highway.´

·

Strunk and White in "
   make this point: ³If those who have
studied the art of writing are in accord on one point it is on this: The surest way to
arouse and hold the reader is to be specific, definite, and concrete.´

·

Take a break from your novel. Take either a day off, or a week. After this period,
you¶ll see your work with a fresh eye.

·


Remember that novels can be light on plot and short on style, but flesh-and-blood
characters with believable traits and motivations can save any book by gaining the
reader¶s sympathy.

·

There¶s an old adage in writing: ³Don¶t tell, show.´ It means, don¶t tell us about
anger, show us. We then will read and feel the anger. Don¶t tell the reader what to
feel. Show the reader the characters and situation, and that feeling of anger (or sorrow,
love, honesty, justice, etc.) will awaken in them.
·

If you have written five pages a day for the last 60 days, you have written about
90,000 words. It is time to begin to rewrite and edit your novel.

·

You have written approximately 300 pages.
But are these pages a novel?
Do they have a beginning, a middle, and an end?
Re-read your novel and ask yourself: Have I raised a question or presented a puzzle,
and then solved it?
If you can give a satisfactory answer to this question, then continue.

·

Do a spell check of your book.

·

Print out your book.

·

Place the book in a safe place and leave it alone for two weeks.

·

Now that you've been away from it for a while, it is time to start editing your novel.
Before you start, remember what James N. Frey says in  ' 0-
! 
$ 1³Think of a climax as the target and the rest of your story as the flight of the
arrow.´ It is time to review the ³flight.´

·

Go back and read the whole novel from start to finish, noting lines and phrases that
are awkward, but keep reading. Don¶t bother to rewrite, not yet.
·

Do chunk editing. Cut away from the bone of the story. Go chapter by chapter and get
rid of ³all your darlings´ as William Faulkner called excessive prose.

·


Re-read your pages ² one at a time ² out loud to ³hear´ any awkward sentence
structure.

·

Go back and cut out one excessive metaphor or simile from each page. As F. Scott
Fitzgerald put it, ³You never cut anything out of a book you regret later.´

·
 
Cut out one adjective or adverb in each paragraph.

·
 
Re-read your novel again and look just for the cliches. Cut: ³one fell swoop,´ ³pretty
as a picture,´ ³in my mind¶s eye,´ ³right as rain.´

·
 
Get rid of unnecessary question marks, exclamation marks and parentheses.

·
 
Get rid of excessive use of foreign words or phrases, the inappropriate use of fancy
words, vulgar language or images, or graphic blood and sex.

·
 
Get rid of meaningless phrases and jargon such as: coming from, networking,
furthermore.

·
 
Read your novel into a tape recorder and then play it back while following the written
text. Look for scenes that don¶t work, language that draws too much attention to itself.
Cut and cut and cut towards the core of the novel, the essence of what your novel is
about. Remember the ³flight´ of your novel.

·
 
In this, your rewriting period, make the opening of your novel as strong as possible.
The first few pages show an editor just how talented your are. Rewrite your opening
scene. You¶ll see that now, having written the novel, you are a much better writer than
you were when you started writing it.

·

Pick up a half dozen great novels and read just the first sentences of each.

·


Go to a good book store and read the opening sentences of novels that have just been
published.

·
 
Re-read your own opening sentence. How does it hold up?

·


Review your manuscript and make sure you have given your readers a picture of your
characters early in the story. Readers don¶t need to know everything, but they do need
to know what is physically important about each character. Use the five senses to get
your characters down on paper.
·


You need a climactic scene at the end of your book, a scene that resolves the conflict.

·


Re-read the endings of your favorite novels. How does your book match up?

·


The short story writer Raymond Carver said he knew a story was finished when he
found himself going through it once and putting commas in, then going through it
again and taking the commas out. Is that how you feel?

·


Write a one-paragraph description of your novel.

·


Write one paragraph about yourself.

·


Presenting your book.
Follow these instructions closely:
‡ Printed on 8 1/2-by-11, standard
20-pound bond white (not high-
gloss) paper.
‡ No three-hole-punched paper.
‡ Pages not bound in any way.
‡ Printed on a laser or ink-jet
printer ² no dot-matrix.
‡ 12-point-type font.
‡ Double-spaced, with one-inch
margins..
‡ Number the pages consecutively
 from title page to last page of
text.
‡ All new chapters start halfway
down a new page.
‡ No mention of rights or
³copyright.´ Mentioning
³copyright´ labels you as an
amateur.
·


Print out your novel.

·


Don¶t mail your novel yet. It is now time to research and find the right agent to
represent you.

·


To begin the agent search:
‡ Check the acknowledgement
pages of books similar to yours to
look for the names of the author¶s
agent.
‡ Ask other writers for
recommendations.
‡ Use the ³Friendly Agents´ list in
the Resources of this newsletter .
‡ Use the Internet and key in such
words as ³writer,´ ³author
representation,´ ³agent.´
·

Select a few agents and send each a letter which begins ² as appropriate:

I recently read ____, which is a wonderful book, and saw that you are ____¶s
agent.

Or:
 My friend/acquaintance______, who is represented by you, suggested you as a
possible agent for my book.

Or:

I read your article in______ about the book business, and was hoping that you
might consider me as a future client.

Add the paragraph you¶ve written about yourself, and then the paragraph about your
novel.

·

In seeking an agent, remember that you¶re an unknown quantity and the top agents are
loaded with clients. Aim at those in the middle of any listing of agents. And be sure
they actually represent the genre of novel you have written.

·

Write a brief synopsis ² one paragraph, no more ² of your novel. Make it strong
and lively. This is an important sales tool.

·

Make a photocopy or print out the first fifty pages or so of your novel. Try to leave off
at a point where the reader will want to know more of the story.

·

Buy a sturdy, padded jiffy bag. Look in an office supply store, Kinko's, etc.

·

Write a very brief letter to the agent. Include the one-paragraph description of your
novel that you wrote earlier. And include one brief paragraph about yourself. Do
sound professional. Do not say, ³I always wanted to be a writer . . .´ or ³I can write
better than the junk I see . . .´
If you are sending your manuscript to more than one agent at the same time, you
MUST tell them that this is ³a multiple submission.´ Either an agent will read it
quicker or not at all; either way, you'll get an answer sooner.
In the jiffy bag, put A) the fifty pages or so of your novel, B) your letter to the
agent, and C) a #10 SASE for the agent's reply. (You will not get the fifty pages
back.)

·

Get a FedEx mailer of the right size and put your jiffy bag in it. Don¶t cut corners
here. Look professional.

·

Entrust your manuscript to FedEx. Keep your receipt. Note the date on your calendar.
Don't expect to hear anything for two months.

·


Buy yourself a drink. Amuse yourself by thinking about who who should star in the
blockbuster movie.

·

Remind yourself that you still have to wait for two months minus a day. Do not call
the agent. If two full months pass and you hear nothing, then you can write a brief
note of inquiry.

·

Remind yourself that everyone ² everyone! ² gets rejected. The stories are endless.
Margaret Mitchell º! 00 2% Daphne du Maurier ºr2% Joseph
Heller º3442%Stephen King (his first four novels), and on and on.

·

Start your next novel.