February 29, 2012

Ask an author: How can I learn to be a novelist?

Filed under: Advice for writers,ask an author — Rhiannon Lassiter @ 7:40 am

Rhiannon (a fan) asks: I was just wondering if could give me some advice on how to start off being a novelist because I have a poem published but really want to be a writer because I have a wild imagination.

Rhiannon (the author) replies:

Dear Rhiannon (what a lovely name! ;)

Like you, I enjoy poetry and I won a poetry competition when I was 13 and it was one of the things that made me think about writing seriously. Congratulations on having your poem published!

There are lots of different ways to become a writer. The best way to get started is to read a lot and to write a lot. Let your imagination take you to extraordinary places and then work on writing them down so that they’re as real to other people as they are to you. Think about what you’re reading and what you’re writing. Think about what makes a character or a place exciting, interesting and worth discovering more about. Think about the kind of story you and your friends enjoy reading and talk to your friends about your ideas. Maybe you could join a book group or a writers group to share your ideas with other people.

I keep an ideas file (both electronically and in hard copy) where I write down my ideas for books. I also have a lot of notebooks so I can sketch out ideas and plans and notes. I often have lots of different stories in my head, on paper and in electronic text. You can refer back to your notes, keep different projects in different folders or notebooks and pick up and put down different ideas as you go. Don’t be afraid to put down an idea if it seems to go dead in your head. You’ll have lots of false starts and lots of ideas that you can’t yet see how to develop. As long as you’re enjoying writing and inventing stories, keep going, eventually you should find the seed of an idea which you can develop into a novel.

NaNoWriMo is a community project to help people write a lot of words. Novels tend to be 60,000+ words so you need to be able to sustain a story across a lot of words. But the more you write the better at it you’ll become. Once you’ve learned how to write multiple chapters you can hone your writing to ensure it’s expressing and achieving what you want it to.

Good luck with becoming a writer and with your poetry. Poetry is an art of its own and perhaps you’ll find a way to use your poetry in writing fiction.

February 8, 2012

Ask an author: an occasional feature

Filed under: ask an author,bloggery — Rhiannon Lassiter @ 7:45 pm

Got a question for an author. Ask it here!
Caution: all #askanauthor advice contains high levels of honesty and should be taken with care.

I’m thinking of quitting my job and spending a year writing a book. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do. Should I follow my dream?”

Rhiannon says: Don’t quit your job! 60% of professional authors don’t make enough to support themselves on their writing income alone. Start by working on your book in evenings and weekends, set aside time to write it and get a copy of the Writers and Artists Yearbook for lists of professional contacts and submission advice. If you get a good response from agents consider approaching your employer about going part time.
Following your dream is much more possible when your bills are paid. It’s hard to manufacture inspiration when you’re fretting about the rent cheque.

I want to write a book about a vampire family in New Orleans or a game in which teenagers compete to the death.

Rhiannon says: Let me stop you there. It’s really important to know the market. Every genre of fiction has classics and current top sellers. Make a note of them. You want to write something that appeals to the same audience as these books – but don’t end up rewriting them. Even if you came across the idea independently, if it’s like something else that already exists you need to find a radical new twist or route into that kind of story to persuade a publisher to buy a book that’s too like an existing title.

Do you think it is a good or a bad idea to take real life events and people and put them in your writing?

Rhiannon says: That depends on how you use them. I’ve drawn on real life events in my writing, for example the first time I had really bad vertigo. But events and situations that involve other people can be tricky. There are events that occur in most people’s lives from the first day of school to the first really bad breakup. Drawing on your own experience adds depth to these events but if you find yourself retelling a real life situation or putting someone you know into a book stop and consider if you want to write this kind of autobiographical fiction. It exposes you – especially if one of your characters becomes a thinly veiled authorial self-insertion. Do you want to be judged on your witty/truthful/insightful retelling or real life or on your creation of situations characters who you invent who you hope will feel real to the reader. What kind of author do you want to be?

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