How to Write a Novel – Part II

Hi Everybody!  Welcome to the second part of the treatment on How to Write a Novel.

Our well known, beloved, American novelist, John Irving (“The World According to Garp” and “The Cider House Rules”) once shared that everything else he did with the exception of writing novels was “vaguely unsatisfying.”

As I was putting together this month’s session, part two of How to Write a Novel,” I realized that perhaps a better title for this article might be, “Why Write a Novel?”

I feel like John Irving, nothing is quite so exciting as to have your words hit the paper (or computer screen) with passion and fire, really giving meaning to something.  Is that motivation enough to write a novel?  For me, I believe it is.

So, rather than delve more deeply into the mechanics behind what it takes to get a novel out, the “how” which I pretty much covered last time in “How to Write a Novel – Part I.”  The 3 Steps that were covered –

1. To block out the time and space for writing
2. To actually start writing, and
3. To continue to write.

This time, I would like to toss out some “reasons why,” and see if you agree or disagree with me on this.  Since this blog is interactive, you can answer me with your thoughts and feelings about this subject and any I’ve covered so far.

To read past issues like “How to Write a Novel – Part I,” you can find them all on my blog at dennigerbolton.wordpress.com.

NOTE:  I am changing the publishing of my Newsletter to a new provider and will soon ask you to re-opt in.  So, be looking for that email.  As always, you can keep up on the blog (address above).

For me, being a humor writer first, my greatest hope has been to elicit a laugh or smile from my reader, and the first time I laughed out loud at my own stuff, I was hooked.

“Wow, that was really good,” said my internal reader.  “Thanks,” I replied, “I’ll write more.”

But seriously folks, what possible reasons could a sane person have for dedicating a year or two or more of pulling a novel, all Sigourney Weaver-like, out of your gut?

Vanity comes to mind.  “I am writing a novel,” you say.  “Oh really?  Neither am I,” says I.

But “novelist” does have a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?  When asked “What do you do for a living?”  I like to reply in a perfect Upper Crust Bostonian, Thurston Howell, III accent, “Ah yes, dear boy, I am a novelist.”

Some additional motivations –

• You get to work at home, alone, and in your jammies.  Or naked, or in whatever garb you want to wear, or not wear.  And you get to work wherever and whenever you want to work.  Ah, the freedom motivation.

“There is nothing to writing.  All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”  Ernest Hemmingway

• You want to get something across, want someone to read your words, you have a story to tell.

• It is a creative outlet.  Instead of painting, playing the piano, chipping a figure out of a hunk of marble with a hammer, your creativity manifests by way of the written word.  A published book is much like a statue that you can hold in your hand.  It is tangible.  It is alive.  It is real.  You can touch it.  Except for an e-book of course, but at least you can print it out.

• Therapy.  Catharsis.  Healing.  A novel is something that you can grow and develop, and bring to life.

‘When I was writing pretty poor poetry, this girl with midnight black hair told me to go on.”  Carl Sandburg

• Fire in the belly passion.

“Writing is an extreme privilege but it’s also a gift. It’s a gift to yourself and it’s a gift of giving a story to someone.”  Amy Tan

• Respect.  The profession of writing ranks pretty high in the kudos department.

• A challenge.  Like Sir Edmund Hillary when asked why he climbed a mountain, said -  “Because it’s there.”.  Writing a novel like climbing Everest is not all that easy.  Expect it to take a year out of your life.

“I am a drinker with writing problems.”  Brendan Behan

• Just for the hell of it.  I mean, what the hell was I going to do anyway?  How satisfying is tossing on the suit and heading off to work Monday through Friday, and watching the NFL or NBA or American Idol or whatever during the weekend?  I mean, why even get up in the morning?   If you can find a passion (writing novels is it for me) why not?

• To make money.  Yes, I am a humor writer.  To be sure, there are ways to make money as a novelist, so stay tuned to this newsletter.  I’m getting around to how I have made a career as a writer and will start on a series of articles on the diverse paths to getting published, followed by the various methods to making a good income as a novelist.

In the spirit of seeing both sides of an issue, giving equal time, or at least some time, to the other side of the issue, I ask the question –

What reasons are there for not writing a novel?

• It takes a long time.  Time you could be keeping up with the Cowboys or your wife or husband, having babies, reading books instead of writing them, the all important paper chase ($), and so on.

• It is pretty competitive out there in the first time writer’s quest to being published, so that’s a bummer.

• A novel is a big thing with a lot of events and characters, and you can get lost in the pages. You can forget you killed off Uncle Frank in Chapter 3 and inadvertently bring him back in Chapter 13.  All this can confuse you, make you anxious.

• It doesn’t have to be good.  If you don’t pay attention, you can write a very bad novel.  Very bad indeed.

Well, if the above caveats don’t deter you, and you find you have no other choice but to write your novel, tune in next month, for a series of articles about the publishing business, called “The Paradigm Shift in Publishing.”

How to Write a Novel – Part I

Hi Everybody,

Welcome to this issue of the Denniger Bolton newsletter, a multi-part treatise on novel writing.

There are at least three steps a writer has got to take to get a novel written.  The first step is to have the desire to write it.  Putting a novel to paper is a long process to be sure, a huge accomplishment.  No way to get it done without wanting (and/or needing) to get it done.

STEP ONE

As I mentioned in an earlier issue, when I took on the task of my first novel, “Hippie Hollow – Murder on a Nude Beach,” I blocked out the hours from 4 a.m. until 7 a.m. as “my time to write.”  One has to really want it to sit one’s ass in front of a computer screen at that ungodly hour.  This was before Face Book, you understand.

STEP TWO

The second step is to begin.  To start writing.  It took five years to get “Hippie Hollow” out of my brain and onto the page.  A couple of the reasons I suppose that it took so long was even though I had read hundreds of mystery novels, I still had to realize that reading is a whole different animal from writing, and that I needed to figure out for myself my own individual process.

Novel writing is not something you can learn by reading about it, so even the subject of this issue “How to Write a Novel” probably won’t do you much good.  Methinks you already posses either the desire to both want to write it and to begin writing it, or you don’t possess it.  You have it or you have it not.

The only possible help I can be to you, the potential novelist, is to say, “Look I’ve done it and if I can do it, so can you.”

STEP THREE

“There are three rules for writing a novel.  Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.”  Somerset Maugham

Okay, old Somerset was partly right.  There are three rules, but I believe I’ve figured out the first two:  Desire & Action.

If there is a third one, it has to be persistence.  Or as Winston Churchill said during those dark days when World War II was not going very well, “Never, Never, Never Give Up.”

So, if you want to write it, will actually begin putting words to paper or screen, and then will keep on keeping on with it, guess what?  There is no way that it won’t happen.  Unless of course, the Nazis attack Austin (or wherever you live), blow up your computer, confiscate all your Bics, and force your ass on a train to Odessa (and that’s Texas not Russia).  Nazis never did well in Russia.

As for me, the novelist, I like to start at the beginning, on the first scene.  Some writers will begin with their most powerful event.  I, on the other hand, work on the first few paragraphs.  Take heart in the fact (yes, it is true) that the more you write, the more polished your writing will become.  For me, the first draft of the first book took me three years (add two years of re-writing), the second book, “The Armadillo Whisperer – Murder Behind Bars” took a little over a year.  While the third book, “Honk If You’re Jesus – Murder By the Bay,” I finished the first draft in two months, and spent the rest of the year re-writing.

Most authors who write about the subject of writing will tell you that you are to keep those fingers moving, write and write and write with no thought to editing until the first draft is done.  Then take a break, let the dust settle (unless you’re in Odessa where the dust never settles), and then and only then, to launch into the editing or re-writing phase.  I sort of do this with a twist.  The next morning after the previous day of writing, I will start at the first line on the first page and begin re-writing (quickly though) until I’ve gotten back to where I left off the day before, and get into first draft writing.  It may take me 30 minutes to an hour restarting.

One of the reasons I do it this way is, I don’t care as much for the bust-a-gut first draft writing phase, and I really do like the re-writing phase.  But it is hard if not impossible to begin re-writing when one has nothing to work on.  Duh.

One caveat, when flirting with the re-write, is not to get bogged down in this editing process.  It’s easy to do, and I must admit, I’ve fallen prey to it.

“I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma.  In the afternoon I put it back in again.”  Oscar Wilde

STEP FOUR

If getting out that first draft is step four, then to paraphrase Kenny Rogers “There’ll be time enough for re-writing when the first draft is done.”

MOTIVATION

One of my English Professors in college, confided in me that he never let anyone read what he had written.  He never submitted his work.  “Isn’t that a little odd?”  I asked.  “I mean isn’t that why we write, to get published, to get our views across, to entertain, to inform, etc, etc, etc?”

I feel it is.  One of our motivations, our desires, to write a novel, it to get it out there.  Why write something and then stick it in a drawer?  This is an interactive newsletter/blog, so I’d like to hear your comments about this subject.  Do you write to be read?  It certainly is my motivation.  Since I consider myself a humor writer, I want to make, or allow, my readers to fall off their sofas laughing, or at least to crack a wry smile every page or two.  I want them on board with me, and I want them to like my first novel so well that they’ll get the second, and third, and so on.

While as I mentioned in a previous issue, I’m a character-driven novelist, it’s probably a good idea to have a plan where you’re going with the thing.  A plot if you were.  Outlines are nice.  The novel will begin here at A and proceed along to B and end up at C.  You don’t have to do it that way, but if your goal is to start writing, that’ll work.

Just throwing words out there in some sort of order will work too.  Start with a word.  Add another word.  Throw in a period, some commas, a semi-colon if you’re feeling daring.  Form a sentence.  Construct paragraphs.  Chapters.  Enough chapters and you have a book.  Is this too basic for you?

Whatever it takes to get you going.  I understand that James Joyce when he wrote “Ulysses” started on line one of page one and didn’t look up until he got to page 800 (or whatever).  He never had to worry about what was happening on Face Book or nothing.  Wow.

If you don’t have the motivation to write, you won’t write.  But if you do have it, then the only thing you need to do in getting your novel written, is to start writing.  Block out some time, and start banging the keys.  Even though it may take months or years to get ‘er done, if you don’t start, a year from now, you still won’t have written anything.

The action step is the most important step in just about anything you will ever do.  Can I hear an “Amen?”  A “Duh” will do.

Or as Michael Jordan used to say, “Just Do It.”  Okay, it was a Nike commercial, but get started and call me in the morning.

Next Time:  How to Write a Novel – Part II

Reader Panel

Denniger Bolton is putting together a “Reader Panel” for the next novel “Cowboy on Fire – Murder Under the Vocano.” If interested email me at denniger@javelinabooks.com.  Or answer by way of comment on this blog.  I’ll email you a chapter per week. You will be free to make any comments, correct typos, etc. For your efforts I’ll send you a signed copy when book comes out and a mention on the Acknowledgment page.

Inspiration and Creativity

#14 – Inspiration & Creativity

THINKING

“Don’t think.  Thinking is the enemy of creativity.  It’s self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy.  You can’t try to do things.  You simply must do things.”  Ray Bradbury

Just like my writing brother Ray, I fall into the writing camp where my stories magically write themselves without a lot of thinking.

As a writing coach, I’ve noticed that some writers I have counseled, especially beginners in the craft, start out immediately with writer’s block.  They are thinking too much, and believe that writing comes from thought.  In my opinion, it doesn’t.  Thinking gets in the way.  At every stage of writing, from the conception or idea, to the final edit, thinking is not helpful.

DRUGS, ALCOHOL, ETC

Artists endeavoring to get out of their own way, have for eons, used drugs and alcohol, meditation, yoga, chanting, and other substances and methods to stop the mundane, one-plus-one-equals-two mindset.

“Sometimes you've got to let everything go…..purge yourself. If you are unhappy with anything…..whatever is bringing you down, get rid of it. Because you'll find that when you're free, your true creativity, your true self comes out.”  Tina Turner

WRITING INSTRUMENTS

I’ve experimented with all sorts of writing tools, beginning at age 14, getting my story down in longhand, after which I upgraded to an old Underwood typewriter with the “O” key that stuck (see my first newsletter #1 – A Cave in the Himalayas), to a huge clunky word processor (remember those?), to at last a laptop computer, which I’ve used for the past ten years (not the same laptop to be sure).

I tried voice recording my words, for transcription later, but found my own personal creative connection did not come through my voice, but through my fingers.  Yes, I channel my creativity straight from my fingers onto the page, bypassing my mind.

PERSISTENCE

As I typed, inspiration came.  When I wrote “Hippie Hollow – Murder on a Nude Beach,” starting some ten years ago now, I wrote and wrote and then cut and cut and then rewrote and rewrote.  And the more I wrote, the clearer and steadier that connection was for me.  Now as I write my fourth novel, “Cowboy on Fire – Murder Under the Volcano,” I feel more in the flow or zone now.  The connection is clear and steady, like living under a radio tower, thus writing nowadays is easy.  Like any craft, one needs, I suppose, to put in one’s time to get to this point.

YOUR MUSE

“Thank the Gods for monotheism.”  Monty Python

Ancient Greeks in their myths, had gods as a way to explain life.  They had a very intricate system of mythology that is still interesting today.

There were gods for love and war and even creativity.  And for the creative arts, muses were allocated.  A muse for music, a muse for dance, one for comedy, one for tragedy, and so on.  The muse of writing was Erato, and she represents poetry, erotica, love, and more exactly passion.

PASSION

I believe that when religions speak about “the Word” they are talking about tapping into this Passion.  The Passion is pure, perfect energy, while what we create from this energy is mortal, or imperfect.  A quick down-and-dirty comparative religion insight – In our Western religions, the Creator is honored, but the things that are created are not.  In Eastern and many native religions, both the Creator and the Created, the perfect and the imperfect, are honored.

What we write, our stories are the Word made Flesh, so to speak.  The Word, or the Passion, or pure energy is like the apple tree.  The apples on the apple tree are the flesh.

RIGHT BRAIN VS LEFT BRAIN

“Creativity is more powerful than knowledge,” said Albert Einstein.  Knowledge is left brained.  Creativity is right brained.  In right brained thinking, it is that part of our brain that connects with the greater, with creativity, with inspiration, with vision.

Some say that we are connecting with our own divine nature, or higher self, or tapping into genius, while others say it’s everything from our subconscious to as high a source as God the Creator Him or Herself.

IT DON’T MATTER

It doesn’t really make a difference where creativity comes from though, does it?  What matters is that as a creative person, whether we are painters, sculptors, musicians, photographers, landscape designers or writers, what we are doing is hooking up to the Power of the Universe.

Fortunately for me, I figured this out when I first started writing.  I found that inspiration arrived just as soon as I got out of the way of my thoughts, and the more I emptied myself of all extraneous schemes, the easier it flowed.

PAYING ATTENTION

The word “creative” is part of the problem.  It presupposes that we, our little selves are doing the creating, but in fact it’s bigger than that.  It’s our big selves, the Creative Mind, that churns out the ideas, and it is our job merely to capture them.

You want to be mindless.  To stimulate creativity, go for a walk.  Mow the lawn, rake leaves, swim, ride a bike, pay bills, shop, make love (be sure to have that recorder handy), or sit on a park bench.  Be open for the flash of inspiration.

ATTITUDE

Mind-sets that will help you with your writing are – self-confidence, patience, independence, inner peace, imagery, expansion.

Mind-sets to avoid are – fear, impatience, procrastination, anxiety, perfectionism, self-consciousness.

ACTION

“We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down.“  Kurt Vonnegut

Creativity and action are intertwined.  You can get an idea, an insight, a fleeting flash of creativity, but if you fail to work on it, to capture it somehow, it can easily be lost.

As I mentioned earlier, I manifest my creativity through my fingers.  I just start typing, and it pours through.  The longer I do this, that is, the more I write, the easier it flows, and the better the quality of my writing.

For those times when you don’t have a laptop in front of you, carry a notebook and jot down those inspirations, or have a recorder that you can talk your ideas into.  Lately I’ve been punching in ideas into a feature on my cell phone, feeling I have arrived finally at the 21^st century.

HIGH GRADE THOUGHTS

“It’s a poor sort of memory that only works backwards.”  Lewis Carroll

Imagination is a form of thought, but it’s a higher grade one.  As a novelist, I spend my days making shit up, and I rely on the vast resources of the Universe to toss me those ideas.

To sum up, you will note that I didn’t write this article in a “Here are the 3 things you need to do to be creative” but instead let it flow.

Next Time:  How to Write a Novel – Part I

New Book and Workshop

I’m working on a new book and workshop with the working title, “Write, Publish & Make a Living from Your Book – In 7 Easy Steps.” Look for the book Summer 2010 and the workshop in Fall 2010.

If you’d like more info on these projects and/or an excerpt on publishing as it stands today, I’ll email you “The Paradigm Shift in Publishing.”

Essential Characters in a Novel – Part II

#13 – Essential Characters in a Novel – Part II

As In mentioned in the previous issue, Essential Characters in a Novel – Part I, which covered three of the essential characters in a novel, the PROTAGONIST, THE LOVE INTEREST and THE BUDDY, in my own personal writing, my writing style, is of the character driven variety.  It is character that moves me.

As a novelist, you have two choices.  To be Plot Driven or Character Driven.  We’ve all read well-plotted stories where the characters are sketchy or thin at best.  The problem with focusing so much on the plot to the detriment of the character, is we have a hard time visualizing what the character looks like.  The plot is king.

The best of both worlds, that is to say, novels that have a great plot or story line, will have great characters acting it out.

I like to develop a roster of characters and let the story come out of those characters.  So, how do we visualize our characters?  We all know that my protagonist, B. B. is a big guy, 30-ish, we know he’s a Texan.  We know (because I mentioned it) he was a football player in high school and college.  We know he was a bouncer at a bar on Austin’s 6^th Street.  We know he was thrown off the Austin Police Department for unnecessary roughness.  He’s a tough guy with a tender side.  How do I convey these traits as the story unfolds?

Every chance I get, I drop in hints to his personality and disposition, without being repetitive of course.  I don’t want the reader to notice I’m doing this.  I make references to his Stetson, which seems to stay on whether he’s in a fight or in bed.  I have him towering over the other characters every chance I get.  My daughter Claire, who is a somewhat detailed young lady, once revealed to me that I mentioned B. B.’s rodeo belt buckle (Texas Steer Wrestling Champion) with hand tooled Mexican belt, in the Hippie Hollow book seven times.  She also counted the number of times I used the “F” word – 97.  Okay, so he has something of a foul mouth.  But who’s counting?  Besides my daughter that is.

Max, the buddy, is older, and properly British, so when he talks he doesn’t say “doesn’t,” he says “does not.”  He says “jolly good” and “my dear boy” as his blue eyes peer over his granny glasses, as well.  So, I continually drop hints to his traits in each instance that Max appears on the page.  This helps anchor the bloke.  Jolly good.

I’ve actually changed B. B.’s buddy from Max in the first two books (“Hippie Hollow” & “The Armadillo Whisperer”) to O. C. Flowers in the last novel, “Honk If You’re Jesus.”  While Max is a Mentor-Buddy, O. C. is a beer drinkin’ Buddy.  The buddy besides being the best friend is the confidant to whom the protagonist can engage in conversation about the case or life as it is being lived on the pages.

All y’all (all y’all is plural for y’all in Texas) Maximus Culpepper groupies will be happy to note that B. B.’s main mentor and confidant will be back in the 4^th novel, “Cowboy on Fire – Murder Under the Volcano.”

COMIC RELIEF – I’ve got a few of these guys lurking around in my books.  T. Rex Rodriquez is one of them.  T. Rex is so outrageous that I can stick him in anywhere I need a tension breaker.  He’s a reporter, so any time B. B. requires a piece of info about anything, there’s T. Rex, the researcher, ready to appear.  T. Rex is tall, bone thin, and wears yogi pants and a Tweedy Bird t-shirt, wearing Birkenstocks and a Yankees baseball cap perched on a mop of salt and pepper dreadlocks.

I’ve had readers come up to me and say, “I know that guy.”  Admittedly, although he is not a real person, he does sound like someone we’d meet on 6^th Street.  One of his features that I reinforce each time he comes to the page, is his voice.  HE TALKS VERY LOUDLY!.  When on the phone, B. B. has to jerk it away from his ear, and can hear the conversation perfectly well after dropping the phone on the table.

As an aside here, I should reveal that the way I write is to start at the beginning and run through the story as the reader would read it.  I don’t jump around.  I just go straight through from beginning to end.  There is an outline (of sorts) that I follow, which is a list of scenes, basically.  I write scene #1 and then move on to scene #2, and so on.  At times, I may not know how the novel will end, and discover it in much the same way as the reader does.

B. B.’s dad, Harry Rivers is more of a comic relief character than a mentor.  Harry like in the case of my own real life son, Barry, is a relationship that has left the parent/child territory and has developed into one of friendship as the years go by.  I can reflect Harry and B. B.’s relationship and make it believable because I’ve been there.

ANTAGONIST – This is the opponent, the bad buy, the villain.  Every good action-adventure-mystery story needs a bad guy, who opposes the protagonist, the good guy.  In Hippie Hollow, the villain is El Jaguar, “a very bad guy, indeed.”  El Jaguar is a hit man, who is hired to kill his target, the televangelist Reverend Arvin Tanner who was supposedly driving home from a party on Lake Travis.  His limo is waylaid at Hippie Hollow, but since Tanner wasn’t in the limo, El Jaguar murders a couple of the passengers, teenagers.

As the story unfolds, El Jaguar gets thrown in prison for an unrelated crime, and when he hears that Merrylee, one of the teenagers in the limo that night, who has been in a coma for five years, has suddenly recovered, he escapes to go finish the job.

B. B., has been hired to check into the unsolved murders, and crosses paths with El Jaguar.  The reason I mention the plot, is to reiterate that after building the character of B. B., and the character of El Jaguar, who was a mercenary soldier- assassin turned contract killer, the story unfolds out of the blue, out of seemingly nowhere.

The problem with a really good, evil antagonist in this genre of story, is you are faced with killing off your bad guy each time you have a new story.  In the second book, “Armadillo” the bad guy is actually an army of mercenaries hiding out in a federal prison.  With a gang of bad guys, B. B. fortunately can kill them off as the book develops.  As in action/adventure story, I saved the badest dude for last.

In the latest novel, the antagonist is the leader of a Chinese Triad crime family in San Francisco.  It has been said, and I believe it, that your story is only as good as your antagonist is bad.  The adversary’s job is to oppose all that your protagonist stands for.  If your hero has a goal, your bad guy is the person who stands in the way of attaining that goal.

With lots of characters in my books, my primary goal is to somehow differentiate between even the most minor of personas, so that the reader doesn’t have to flip back pages when a particular character appears.  To the extent that I’ve been able to pull that off, I feel I’ve been successful.  Jolly good!

Next Time:  Inspiration & Creativity

New Website

Hi, if you want to get back to the Denniger Bolton website click here – www.dennigerbolton.com