Hi Everyone!
Wow! So I finally let friends and family in on my secret yesterday and the response has been encouraging. Thanks to everyone for your support! I had so many private message and text me saying that they would love to write a book, and I'm here to tell you that you can!
Now, please remember that I don't purport to be a 'professional writer', so anything I say in this blog is personal opinion. I first tried to start writing a book when I was about twelve...writing by hand in a notebook! I still have it, and when I look at it now I cringe! :-) But over the years, I have learnt more, practise more and understood more about writing and language. So here it is! My advice...
1: Practise! Practise! Practise! You may think that I have spelt 'practise' incorrectly - well, no, it isn't. It is the verb - to do. The other 'practice' is a noun. As in, 'at her medical practice...' You need to be familiar with what nouns, verbs, adjectives etc are. Grammar is paramount to the understanding of your story. To enable your readers to comprehend what you are writing, you have to have an understanding of the mechanics of the English language. If you have a pretty good grasp on that already, you are already part way there!
Now you have to practise with the mechanics...what I mean here is try and write something...anything...everyday! You might describe your day, a drive somewhere, something you saw. Next, find a thesaurus. Yes, a thesaurus! Try and learn one synonym (word meaning the same) and one antonym (word meaning the opposite). If you can learn two words a day and use them, after a year, your vocabulary knowledge will thank you!
Here's a challenge: Find something to write about (a picture, a flower, a person). Make notes about what it looks like. Start basic...for example - 'My rose bush is flowering.' That might turn into...'Spring has finally arrived. I hear the birds chirping and the bees buzzing. The rose bush in my garden has started to bloom. It is a delicious, rich scent emanating from the flowers. They are a rich, deep red, almost the colour of blood.'
You will see how the reader is then put into the experience. They don't have to try and make up what THEY think the rose looks/smells like...you have told them using a variety of adjectives and full sentences.
2: Read, read, read! If you have an idea for a story, think about what genre you want it to be. Do you want it to be historical fiction? Contemporary romance? Paranormal? Science fiction? The list of genres is endless, but you will know what setting you want to put your characters in.
Next, read a huge variety of that genre! From the research I have done, apparently romance is one of the easier genres to start with, so I read A LOT of romance novels over a twelve month period...some brilliant (like the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy, the Crossfire series and Gabriel's Inferno books 1 & 2), and you will see how these writers develop characters, settings, climaxes (exciting bits of the book...not the sex in them!) ;-)
Once you have read quite a bit of your chosen genre, have a go yourself. If you choose historical (which I tried once), be careful. You have to devote a lot of time and energy to research. Your 'historical facts' must be correct. Example - if your book is set in say early 1800's, don't say things like they got into the car...car's weren't invented. Even steam trains weren't around til mid 1800's. People travelled by horse and cart and boat. This will then add credibility to your story.
If you choose to write humour, please be careful...in other words, avoid 'Dad jokes.' Also, make sure you have a couple of friends who can be brutal with you. Humour needs to be careful. It has to happen naturally, and flow well. It can't be forced. If you are not a 'naturally funny' person, I would suggest you avoid this one until you have practised your writing skills for some time.
3. Just do it! Have a go! Don't be shy! If you are worried you don't have a novel in you, try a novella. Novella's are much shorter than 'proper' novels. If you don't think you can write a novella, start with a short story. Expand where you can. By expanding your short story in different places, you can add more substance to characters, scenes, events etc.
My biggest tip for this though is make sure you don't bore your reader. I have read brilliant and not so brilliant books. If an author hasn't got me after the third or fourth chapter and I find myself wanting to skip forward to get to the good bits, I normally give up. You don't want your reader to do this. You want people unable to put your book down. Of course, not everyone is the same and some things will interest them more than others. The joy for me when I read is not just content but the author's style of writing and the way they can engage the reader.
There are books that I thought I would never enjoy (aka Fifty Shades!) but the pace and the style was fantastic. Some bits I was like 'hurry up' when it got 'samey' but it was still good. Obviously since it made the New York Times 'Best Seller List'.
Always make sure you have several climaxes in the book...something will happen 'cute meet' for example...then it becomes a little bit about them, then something else. Keep building these up...think of them as points on a mountain. If you plan to have more than one book in the story, finish on a big one that makes the reader want to come back. It's usually a good idea to have the climax at the end of your chapter to make the reader want to continue. This is how you make your reader late for work, or want to read on the bus or train!
Always have at least one protagonist in the story to cause conflict. This just makes things a little more exciting. Have you ever read a book without some sort of conflict or something that tries to challenge a character?
Well, there you go. That's some of my writing tips. I hope you find them useful, and if you would like to share some of your 'practise' then please comment below. We can only improve by having constructive feedback ;-)
Cheers,
Kelly :)
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