Having Trouble Writing Your Novel? Read These!
Eight Simple Recommendations to Help You Create and Discover Your Own Worlds
Many of us grow up reading novels. Whether it's literary classics of the past or the latest contemporary hits, our youth and sometimes our adulthood are shaped by the stories shaped and crafted by others. Having spent many years diving from one fictional world to the next, one day we may find ourselves wishing to create one of our own.
But writing a novel is no easy feat. Even if you have ideas for your main characters and the world they'll inhabit or can picture the climax of your story as clearly as you can read the text on this screen, learning how to get from Chapter 1 to "The End" can seem an insurmountable task.
Where do we get started with writing a novel? Should you start with your characters or your setting? Do you need to plan out the whole plot from start to finish? How do you balance research with writing? How do I know if what I'm writing is even any good?
I asked myself these very questions years ago when I set out to write my very first novel. After reading religiously on fiction writing, across dozens of books, I eventually settled on a select few that gave me all the tools I needed to dive into my first draft. With the advice of some of modern literature's greatest fiction writers, I was able to produce my first 59,679-word manuscript in just 28 days.
At first, I would've thought achieving such a feat would be impossible. But there are ordinary people like the rest of us who manage to do the same thing every year. Just ask the members of the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) community. Every November for over two decades, hundreds of thousands of writers set out to write a 50,000-word novel in just 30 days. And you know what? Many of them succeed!
Maybe you don't have quite as much time to devote to writing a whole novel in a month, but you can still take small steps each day—as little as a couple hundred words—and come out of the other side of the tunnel with a complete story in your hands.
In this piece, I'm going to share with you the books that helped me finish my first two novels. These books were my guiding light at every stage of the writing process. I'll share their biggest takeaways and point you in the right direction to use their lessons to write your own stories.
The following books cover everything from establishing your setting, tackling the day-to-day work of drafting (and later editing), and getting your characters from A to Z in a way that'll leave your readers hooked and wanting more.
Sounds good? Let's get started!
The On Writing and Worldbuilding Series by Timothy Hickson
I'd be remised if I didn't begin this list with the one writer who's guided me the most for years. Timothy Hickson is a published fantasy/science fiction short story author and video essayist who has devoted the last decade of his life to analyzing and studying all of the ways that fiction moves us. From books like the Lord of the Rings series to television and film franchises like Avatar: The Last Airbender, Hickson has established himself as an authority on literary analysis and has helped millions of people worldwide understand why certain story elements work as well as they do and when they can fall flat.
Hickson has assembled his findings in his multi-volume On Writing and Worldbuilding book series. Each volume covers a series of topics to help you build out specific elements of your story, from first chapters and fight scenes to world histories and magic systems.
Every volume of the series can be read independently of each other. So if there are topics in Volume 3 you think you'll need help with, you don't have to read Volumes 1 & 2 beforehand. Hickson's series is multifaceted and you can pick up whichever entries you feel are best suited to the story you wish to tell.
The topics covered in each volume are as follows:
Volume 1
Prologues
The First Chapter
The Exposition Problem
Foreshadowing
Villain Motivation
Hero-Villain Relationships
Final Battles
The Chosen One
Hard Magic Systems
Soft Magic Systems
Magic Systems and Storytelling
How I Plan A Novel
Polytheistic Religions
Hidden Magical Worlds
How Empires Rise
How Empires Work
How Empires Fall
Volume 2
Fight Scenes
Handling Pacing
Mentor Characters
Positive Arcs and Redemption Arcs
Power Escalation in a Magic System
Flashbacks and Backstory
Civil Wars
First Person
Dark Lords
Fantasy and Alien Races
World Histories
Monarchies
Place Names
Class, Wealth, and Power
How Class Systems are Maintained
How Class Systems Collapse
Cities and Towns1
Hard versus Soft Worldbuilding
Volume 3
Character Descriptions
Death Scenes
Dialogue
Subtext in Dialogue
Darkest Hours
Show, Don't Tell
Plot Armour
Environment Descriptions
Elemental Magic Systems
Antiheroes
Paragon Heros
Death and the Afterlife
Cities and Towns2
Mountains
Island Civilizations
Fallen Civilizations
If the above lists seem too intimidating and you're looking for a general primer to get you started, pick up Volume 1. Not only will you get tips on how to write your first chapters and your major characters, but Hickson also provides tips on how you can outline your plot and keep your characters moving at a steady pace from start to finish.
On Writing by Stephen King
Arguably one of the most recognized names in literature, Stephen King needs no introduction. I've sung the praises of King's memoir on the craft of writing before and its inclusion on this list is more than well-deserved.
What King provides in his memoir/handbook are the tools of the writer. King takes the lessons you may have learned on the English language in school and combs through the literary techniques most essential for writing fictional prose.
King places special emphasis on the building blocks of language—vocabulary, grammar, and parts of speech—and guides you through the path of stringing words together that move your story forward.
All of this may seem rudimentary, but King emphasizes that these fundamentals are essential to producing anything readable. "Good writing," King says, is "about making good choices when it comes to picking the tools you plan to work with.”3
With these fundamentals, King encourages aspiring writers to do two things: "read a lot and write a lot."4 Reading to study the craft is an important part of developing as a writer.
If you're seeking to do something as laborious as attempting to write a novel, you're likely doing so out of a natural love of reading and books. It's from this love that, King believes, the best writing lessons can be found:
"Every book you pick up has its own lesson or lessons, and quite often the bad books have more to teach than the good ones."5
King's book provides the foundation upon which the lessons you'll learn from the rest of this list stand. As you pound away towards getting your 2,000 words per day, you'll find yourself cruising through your story before you know it.6
But before you do that, you must make peace with one crucial fact.
Nobody Wants to Read Your Sh*t by Steven Pressfield
This bit of tough love advice comes from author and novelist Steven Pressfield. Pressfield himself received this advice when he received his first job in advertising before becoming a screenwriter and novelist.
For Pressfield, this tidbit served as a lesson that while it is great to be creatively ambitious, we must set practical expectations for ourselves and our work:
"In the real world, no one is waiting to read what you've written. ...Nobody wants to read anything. ...It isn't that people are mean or cruel. They're just busy."7
Knowing this Pressfield states that it's important that we make our message to the reader clear and presentable. In the case of novel writing, we must make sure our plots are easy to follow, our characters act in accordance with their own motivations, and—put simply—that the worlds we create make sense, at least within the context of the story. If we learn to do this and do this well, we'll be able to write stories that no one will be able to put down until they turn the last page.
Pressfield's work is my primary motivational reading material when I pursue any creative project. Nobody Wants to Read Your Sh*t encouraged me to set my ego aside and look at my completed manuscript as it really was, stripped down to its bare elements. As Pressfield and the other authors on this list can attest, if the individual elements of your story don't work, then your story doesn't work either.
Pressfield's work punches well above its weight and gets you to think critically about the body of work you've assembled before you. If you're not able to be a critic of your own work, how will you ever be able to show it to others? How will you know your story is any good if you're only seeing it in your eyes?
You know your story best. You know how you intend all the pieces to fit together. But just because you can see the picture of the puzzle put together in your head doesn't mean you've put all the pieces where they need to go to form that image. What looks clear to you may look no clearer to your readers than trying to see your reflection in a swamp.
So take the time. Be critical. Give your manuscript the scrutiny it deserves. Your novel deserves it, your readers deserve it, and so do you.
Honorable Mentions
Fight Write by Carla Hoch
Depending on your genre, you may find yourself writing a lot of fight scenes. My first fantasy novel ended with a large-scale tournament arc. Dozens of characters would be locked in one-on-one or group combat for multiple chapters at a time. It was an ordeal to navigate and plan around.8
While the fight scenes chapter in On Writing and Worldbuilding: Volume 2 did a lot to help me structure and identify the narrative threads of each fight scene, the sentence-by-sentence care needed to make everything believable required a little bit more.
Enter Fight Write. Carla Hoch, as a writer and trained martial artist, provides a comprehensive guidebook on how to write for different fighting styles, determine the fighting psychology of the characters involved in the conflict, and even how to properly write injuries to add the appropriate level of stakes to your story.
It's difficult for me to imagine writing fight scenes without this book at my side. It is indispensable.
No Plot? No Problem! by Chris Baty
I mentioned National Novel Writing Month briefly above. This book is written by one of the community's founders. In this "low-stress, high-velocity guide," Baty guides you week-by-week through the process of planning and assembling your novel from a rough idea to a 50,000-word manuscript.
I found that this book gave me useful benchmarks and goals to reach for along the journey of finishing my first novel draft. The advice is practical and clearly communicated.
If you're participating in National Novel Writing Month, you'll want this book by your side.
Ready, Set, Novel! by Chris Baty, Lindsey Grant, and Tavia Stewart-Streit
As a companion to No Plot? No Problem!, the NaNoWriMo team also created this writer's workbook to help you write down your ideas, work out your characters and setting, and form everything you need for when you're ready to face the empty page.
I filled out this entire workbook from start to finish. By the time I was done—and the rear storage pocket was filled with additional notes and ideas—I knew I was ready to write that first draft.
Writing a novel is no easy ordeal. It takes a lot out of you. But every bit of care you put into it can affect the final result by orders of magnitude.
These books gave me the tools to plunge head-first into the unknown expanse of the blank page. I emerged with a novel I'm proud of, not just for the story I was able to tell, but for the fact that I did it.
Becoming a novelist felt impossible. Until I did it. And if I can do this, you can too. I believe in you. You got this!
Happy writing!
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Sources:
King, Stephen. On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. New York, New York, United States of America, Scribner, 2000.
Pressfield, Steven. Nobody Wants to Read Your Sh*t: And Other Tough-Love Truths to Make You a Better Writer. North Egremont, Massachusetts, United States of America, Black Irish Entertainment, LLC, 2016.
This chapter reappears in On Writing and Worldbuilding: Volume 3 by Timothy Hickson in expanded form.
This chapter is an updated version of the chapter of the same name from On Writing and Worldbuilding: Volume 2 by Timothy Hickson.
King, On Writing, 128.
Ibid, 145.
Ibid.
King prefers to write roughly ten pages every day, which he translates to about 2,000 words, a figure that he believes is achievable for beginning writers as well (Ibid, 154).
Pressfield, Nobody Wants to Read Your Sh*t, 4.
Not the easiest thing to do as a first-time novelist, but it’s what the story demanded and things turned out alright in the end.