Quick Link: How You Can Avoid Making Structural Mistakes in Your Novel

Quick links, bringing you great articles on writing from all over the web.

At Live Write Thrive, C.S. Lakin always has great tips. With NaNoWriMo coming up I thought this would be a great help.

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How You Can Avoid Making Structural Mistakes in Your Novel

by C.S. Lakin

I’ve spent more than three decades writing novels. And at first I had no clue what I was doing.

Like many people, I think it would be a cinch to write a novel. I read voraciously, so why wouldn’t I just intuitively know how to construct a novel?

This is what a whole lot of people think. But perhaps you know the truth by now: writing a terrific novel is complex, like building a house. You have to have the “big picture” in mind the while time you are plotting and writing. And that’s like spinning a dozen plates at one time.

It’s doable, but it does take practice.

So after spending three decades dropping a lot of plates, I spent a ton of time tearing the novel-writing process apart. During those years I attended plenty of writing conferences and retreats and workshops. I read lots of books on the craft, and when the Internet became part of daily life, I started reading blog posts and listening to podcasts and doing all I could to get novel construction under my belt.
Did I make a lot of mistakes? Heck yeah.

I spent years doing things wrong. I didn’t get scene structure—or novel structure, for that matter. Mostly because I didn’t get that there were some basic rules or principles to structure.

I hated the thought of following a formula. I didn’t want to write like everyone else. I wanted to be unique.

And if you get only one thing from today’s post, make it this:

 

Read the full post on Live Write Thrive.

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