lessons after writing three novels

1. Get a good time and space location- when/where- and the more limited the better- a town, a monastery etc.
2. Have people learning stuff.
3. In a whodunnit write it as if one guy is the baddy, then in the second draft redo it for another character- the one you never thought of.
4. Never do rewrites that are undirected ie. just adding stuff that comes to you. Write a draft, print out, read, produce a page numbered crit list, put in corrections- make it as mechanical as possible.
5. For any scenario where you don’t know what happens do a top 10 list: eg 10 ways he kills max etc. then pick the best way. Often it is number 3 or 4, not number 1.
6. Start with a map of the location, even a really rough one. Add stuff and details to the map, even photos, build up a map board not a lot of notes- though notes can be referenced.
7. Go through each character and find not just their financial/romantic or revenge motive but the flashes when they are connected to reality, their flashes of real feeling and how these are submerged by life. Their excuses for doing bad: “it’s not really me” being one. Or the feeling that their life is shallow but what else can one do? It is very important the world should not be taken as seriously as it takes itself.
8. Have no breaks when writing the first draft. By break I mean any gap longer than ‘two or three days having fun.’ No break where you have to apply yourself mentally. A day off a week is fine, all you need.
9. Make a fix list straightaway after reading the first draft. However trivial don’t worry. As you fix great ideas will come for the second draft.
10. Break the story into three parts for writing and planning, certainly for fixing- fix each part in turn. Then add a fourth part if you need to.
11. Think when you write of the four way triangulation: smell, touch, sound. Don’t worry about visuals too much as we are all pretty visual thanks to TV. Triangulate a world by using the past or future- like the opening sentence of a 100 years of Solitude. To get away from ‘thin’ writing you just triangulate these sensations from all senses. To triangulate with past and future in the present is good too.
12. Have the present affected by the past, a mystery maybe, and what will happen prefigured.
13. Build a world with people from different generations.
14. Embed a real mythology in there.
15. Make the characters change over time. Basically a novel is a record of a character’s change for the better. His evolution when faced with a titanic struggle.