How to write a novel

Eight lessons

The course

Work through in order if you are starting from scratch, or jump to the hole in the manuscript. Each lesson ends with exercises and a link to the studio that does that job.

1. 01FoundationsWhy, premise, genre, point of viewLock a novel-worthy idea, know why you will stay with it, and choose the lens the reader will live inside.
2. 02CharactersWant, wound, lie, namesBuild a protagonist with a want and a wound, an antagonist with reasons, and names that mean something.
3. 03SettingTime, weather, rooms, pressureMake setting a pressure, not a postcard. Rooms, weather and era should change what a character can do.
4. 04Plot and structureActs, beats, obstacles, climaxShape rising trouble. Use a three-act spine or a journey map — then make sure the middle earns the ending.
5. 05Theme, voice and styleArgument, sentence, earLet theme grow from choices. Find a voice a reader could pick out of a line-up. Keep the prose clear enough to disappear.
6. 06The first draftHours, counts, permission to be badSchedule the work. Count the words. Refuse to polish chapter one until chapter twenty exists.
7. 07RevisionStructure, scenes, sentencesLet the draft cool. Fix the story, then the scenes, then the words. Cut what you love if it is not working.
8. 08Beyond the draftAgents, contracts, money, companyWhen the book exists: who to send it to, what a deal actually says, how writers are paid, and how not to do it alone.

From the desk

Articles

Shorter pieces on the problems that sit beside the lessons: how long a novel is, how a chapter should end, and whether you are allowed to use your own name.

• LengthHow many words is a novel?Fifty thousand is the floor, not the target. Most novels that find a reader sit between seventy and a hundred and fifty thousand words.
• HabitHow to prepare for a first draftA hundred thousand words is too large to contemplate. A few hundred words a day is not. The novel is finished by the habit, not by heroism.
• The shelfCommercial fiction and literary fictionThe labels are unfortunate. One implies the book is not literature. The other implies it does not sell. Neither claim survives contact with a bookshop.
• The world on the pageDescriptionYou are painting a canvas in the reader’s mind. Give them enough to believe the place, and not so much that the story sits down.
• A reader’s questionIs local detail too parochial?A novel needs a place. That place does not have to be New York, Paris or London. Readers like being taken somewhere they have not stood.
• People, not labelsCharactersA name and a description produce flat writing. A character needs a life that was already underway before your chapter began.

All 32 articles