Your Writer's Voice: Step 3

Step 3: After Step 2, consider these questions:

Is your sentence outrageous? Could it be?

Is your sentence a question? Would it be stronger as a question?

Revise, as necessary.

The "novel in a year" blurb lists the resources of eHow and Robert Ray's "The Weekend Novelist." I recently purchased the early edition (1994) of Ray's book and was disappointed to see that he spends the first month dedicated to developing characters. I'm happy to see that the eHow guidelines focus the first month on pre-planning, deciding the "big issue" of story/plot with character development coming later. Although I agree that character and plot are the two most important ingredients of a story, beginning a plan with a character first and plot second is like hiring an employee and then deciding just what it is you plan to have him do. Other than this "out of order" issue with Ray's book, it appears to be a good resource.

Your Writer's Voice: Step 2

Step 2: Is your sentence one that could have been said by any person or writer you know? If so, revise it until you're convinced no one else could have said that sentence.

Preparation is Everything

Here is another approach that parallels our month-by-month plan. The first step fits with the first month. The other steps fit in along the way. I just thought another take on this process might be helpful.

How to Prepare to Write a Novel

From ehow.com

Step 1: Choose the genre that interests you most. Genres include: action-adventure; crime; detective; fantasy; horror; mystery; romance; science fiction; western; literary fiction. Novels can also be categorized according to specific criteria, including truth of main story; truth of general setting; occupation of a major character; worldview of narrator; focus of interest (plot, character, other); setting; target audience; age of the author; literary realism vs idealism.

Step 2: Decide who your characters will be.

Step 3: Carefully review the book of baby names and pick names that best suits your characters.

Step 4: Visualize the story's setting and write a brief description.

Step 5: Write a summary that focuses on the most important parts of the story.

Step 6: Make an outline for each chapter.

Step 7: Begin writing a rough draft.

Step 8: Rewrite the story until you are satisfied that you have done your best.

Your Writer's Voice: Step 1

Step 1: Imagine yourself on a rooftop, the townspeople assembled below. You are allowed to shout down one last sentence. It is the sentence by which the world will remember you forever. What one thing are you going to shout? Write down that one sentence.

Finding Your Writer's Voice: Introduction

As a writer, it is important to find your individual voice, theme and view of the world that distinguishes you from all others. Such voice has two components: what is said and the way it is said. Here is an exercise that may help you, as a writer, discover your original voice.

The intent of this exercise is to create one sentence that is strong, incontrovertible and uniquely yours. Your first attempt may not produce your ideal expression, so save your results and try again later after thinking on it more. If nothing else, this exercise has provided yet another lesson in the shunning of the sentence that comes first, and honing, changing, polishing the words of a single sentence to test all of its possibilities. That's what a writer does.

It is recommended that you work through this exercise one step at a time. To that end, we will present a new step every Saturday. The first step follows immediately.

This is excerpted from "Stein on Writing" by Sol Stein.

An Overview

Our Novel-in-a-Year Plan

 
First month: Pre-planning—jot down first impressions, big scenes, genre, major and minor characters and conflicts. Note the elements, don’t write elaborate descriptions.

Second month: Set setting—develop your setting, flesh out place, customs, geography, important time-specific details (especially those that will give a better handle on details that will develop later).

Third through fifth months: Develop characters—two to four months along with plot development (total of six months). Write bios for main characters. Create fact sheets about their lives and personalities (for easy reference). Explore their voices.

Sixth and seventh month: Plan your plot—using what you’ve done for setting and characters, develop more scenes. If desired, map out climatic structure for each scene to understand each scene’s purpose. Also, develop descriptions. Clarify “5Ws and 1H” of each scene.

Eighth through twelfth months: Write rough draft—Write outline, if necessary; or, use a stack of notes or note cards. First draft will go well with a clear idea of your setting, characters, motivations and direction. Finish draft by December 31 or earlier, if you want to edit and rewrite what you’ve done.

Our Novel-In-A-Year Plan

Okay, so we're going to work on writing a novel in a year. A more leisurely pace than NANOWRIMO to be sure. Each month we'll work on something new as we work toward our goal of writing an entire novel within the next 12 months. We'll be using two resources primarily: 1) an outline discovered at ehow.com and 2) a book entitled "The Weekend Novelist" by Robert J. Ray. So, get ready...away we go!