Writing your own novel - Gracie's guidance notes

There is no denying the inevitable fact that I will be thirty in less than two months time. Now, if that were not traumatizing enough (and believe me, the way I'm hanging on to the last few weeks of being in my twenties is pathetic), it is also scary in the way it reminds me of all the things that I had set up myself to do before reaching the big Three-OH!and which, sadly did not.

I have already spoken about my wish list in an earlier blog, so won't go into all the details again, but there is one particular failed mission that is really quite disappointing. I have to face the harsh reality that the novel I had planned to write before my thirtieth birthday is not only not quite finished, but not even quite started. And by "quite started" I mean not started, at all, not even close. And by that I mean, I haven't, in the words of Phoebe Buffay, even written the page numbers yet. Having said that, not writing my own novel gave me the time to read extensively the works of other people throughout my life (and for those who are asking why I didn't spend the time writing instead of reading - well geniuses, it's easier to let yourself get entertained by other people's writing than to write you own. Not really Physics Advanced as a concept now, is it?)

Anyhooooo, reading all sorts of books from all sorts of authors made me realise that there are a number of ways to actually approach the writing of a novel, which I will try to portray here, as a sort of "Writing for Dummies - Choose Your Style to Make it Big!" guidebook. Once I actually choose what style works best for me ... you'll get to know. So ... here goes:

Austen/Dickens Style

This is the approach of writing specifically about what you know and see around you. Whether it is young marriagable women who spend their days embroidering or going to balls, or whether it is hungry, miserable orphans starving in the streets of London, Jane Austen and Charles Dickens made it big by faithfully reproducing the world around them, and writing about something that the readers at the time could totally relate to. In all fairness, it does help that readers of our time don't mind being unable to relate to their world, and that someone, somewhere decided that their works are classics and should be read and reread hundreds of years later.

If I had to take this approach, and seeing the lameness of my current life, I would base my novel on the daily adventures of a target and deadline driven government department from the point of view of a printer. I would call it Paper Jam. A real, edge-of-your-seat page turner. True story.

Ken Follett Style

This style is based on pure, thorough, detailed and exhausting research. Basically you either need to be as rich as whatevers from the get-go, or else you would have already made it big enough from the Austen/Dickens approach in order to have the money and time to actually spend years researching the trenches of World War I, or the architectural style of Medieval England. There is no way you can write something as gloriously beautiful as Pillars of the Earth without having anything else to do except research about it in some dumpy university library somewhere in England.

For the rest of us who work 45+ hours per week .... refer to the Approach 1. For those who have the time and the money ... do some research on the Great Siege like David Ball did in the Sword and The Scimitar. Fantastic read and welcomed smuttiness between a Knight and a Maltese damsel. Highly recommended, even by Tom Hanks on Twitter (I just KNOW).

Dan Brown/Michael Crichton Style

Write about nonsense, but make it sound real, and include a cliffhanger in every page. Then get Tom Hanks (hahaha mentionitis today) to play Robert Langdon in the movie version of your books. You'll get millions. And then you can go all Ken Follett on us and write something amazing.






Stephenie Meyers/Suzanne Collins Style

Now, this needs a multi-step approach, because let's face it, you need to write a saga that enthralls the Facebook generation, so you need to keep the teenagers happy, and the non-teenagers (like me v_v) so hooked to actually not be embarrassed to admit it. So, what you need to include in your swoony sagas is the following:

a. An obnoxious but still relatable heroine: Bella Swan is a complete disaster from Book 1, Katniss Everdeen is awesome until Book 3. However, the more annoying is the heroine, the more hope you give young girls that even if SHE can get the boy in the end, there is hope for the rest of us, who are more adjusted and who do not fall in love with vampires or have to fight to death in a televised arena.

b. A perfect hero: whether it is a vampire who refuses to drink human blood, or a baker's son whose aim in life is to sacrifice himself so that the heroine can make it alive from the abovementioned arena, you need to create a symbol of perfection that girls believe could actually exist. It of course helps if in the movie version the guys cast to play the role have a jawline that was friggin CHISELED BY ANGELS. *age-inappropriate swoon*


c. The useless other (hot) guy: I'm not sure why these guys are always included in such sagas. Meyers gave us Vampire v Werewolf, Collins came up with the Baker v Hunter and in both cases, the triangle added nothing but unnecessary angst to an already angsty book. It is obvious from Book 1 that these hotties will never get the girl, so I guess the only reason to put them there is to get the tweens to have two posters stuck to their wall, rather than one. But again, that somehow seems to get you millions, and bring a couple of boring actors (the love antagonists are always boring) to stardom, so I guess it's a win-win situation for some.

NB: An extremely important point to keep in mind in writing these Young Adult sagas is to take good care of the names you give your protagonists. In the age of Brangelina and TomKat, I think Suzanne Collins should have been a bit more careful when naming the Hero Peeta and the Heroine Katniss. Some more care would have avoided the actors the embarrassment of standing behind signs that said "I LOVE PEENISS". Just saying.




There are other styles of course, and I just skimmed the most obvious perhaps, but I admit that I cannot even try to understand how J.K. Rowling could have possibly created the perfect world within Harry Potter, where a school of wizards could take our world by storm. I also did not mention Tolkien's Lord of the Rings saga, because well, that is pretty simple: write about a mystical world and leave out the love element. This will ensure that that part of the human population that was born with a uterus would avoid it like the plague. Boring!

So, to all aspiring writers out there ... don't procrastinate like me ... but just write! Then, send me your books, and I will read them. And dissect them to pieces, in true Gracie style.

Love and read!

Grace xxx