Want to Write a Novel? My Novel Writing Experience

Have you always wanted to write a novel but didn't know where to start? Do you have ideas that you've always wanted to turn into something alive?

I have always been someone who felt like I needed to express myself in words, and I love to live through the stories of others by reading, watching movies, and now writing. Writing is a challenge that is often easier said than done. I originally hoped that I could just begin writing and that maybe I was one of those naturally gifted writers. But the truth is even the most famous writers have put in a lot of grit to get where they are. Writing like all forms is a craft, and though it's important to be original and define your voice, it doesn't take away from the fact that the pieces are intentionally put into place to make a work excel. These are some of the notes I took while I learned about craft as I wrote my first novel (Check out my blog post about MFA programs in Creative Writing to get an idea of how to hone this craft).

1. I don’t write the characters. The story writes them. You can’t force an idea of a character into a story. It doesn’t really work like that, at least not for me. For example, if I wanted to write a character that was close to my ex girlfriend, the story would have to nearly be an autobiography. Because characters don’t just develop to be how you perceive them given any story. It’s the story and how the character interacts with it that makes the character.

2. When writing, I’m merely just observing things as they come along. For a long time a tried to reason everything. Why a certain person would be this way or that way. Psychologically they would think this way. But sometimes that doesn’t work. Instead I’ve embraced my instinctual observations. I watch as things unfold and report them. There is no conjuring of characters and stories and settings. It’s sort of like a movie. You watch and observe. The characters will do things that make sense. That’s all there is to it. No planning or structuring. It’s impossible. Now, maybe plotting scenes like a movie, but the rest is living it. Be alive and reporting as is. When you plan out characters before hand, they become flat. A cutout of someone. In real life, you don’t walk into a room and psychoanalyze random people. You don’t know anything about those people. And that’s how writing characters needs to be. Observing and reporting. Making natural judgements on people. You don’t know them. You’re trying to figure them out. And that’s the point. You cannot know the characters. The story dictates them. You have no control over them. Create “situations” as Stephen King says and let them show their colors. Create good scenes like in a movie. Let the characters show themselves. My characters are just depictions of how I perceive people to be

3. I think that being around people and the busy-ness of life helps in the middle of writing a novel. Not in the sense of writing while being around people, but taking a break to be in crowded settings of people. It allows me to observe others, giving me a better/accurate idea of how people actually are and interact with one another

4. I feel like writing good dialogue is the best way to start writing a quality scene/chapter/beat sometimes. The finished product doesn't have to start with dialogue, but by starting with dialogue in the beginning, you begin to create substance, and then can build around it from there. Another note on dialogue, I think that it's a great opportunity to speak through your characters. Dialogue seems like a great outlet to express and digest philosophies, especially through secondary characters. 

5. The cool thing about writing is that there there are a million different scenarios you can write about, but it doesn’t mean that all of them make sense. The ones that make sense are a depiction on how you perceive the world. After so long of living, you begin to understand the world a certain way and that becomes the basis on which you write. A gut feeling. If you don’t trust your gut feeling as a writer, you may as well just write for the fun of it, because you will never develop a voice.

At the end of the day, writing a novel isn’t about mastering rules or waiting for permission to begin. It’s about learning to trust yourself, your instincts, your observations, your way of seeing the world. Craft matters, but it doesn’t exist to cage creativity, it exists to support it. The more I wrote, the more I realized that stories don’t come from forcing ideas onto the page, but from showing up consistently and paying attention, to people, to moments, to the quiet pull of a gut feeling that says this matters. If you’ve been carrying a story around for a long time, unsure of how to begin, maybe the answer isn’t knowing more, it’s starting anyway. Let the story surprise you. Let the characters teach you who they are. And most importantly, let yourself learn by doing. That’s where the real work—and the real joy—of writing begins.