How to Write a Novel

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Permalink Reply by Marissa Payne on June 4, 2009 at 12:15pm

This is great for me. I'm a non-fiction writer looking to write fiction finally. I've got a novel in mind. I've started it several times and now have a first chapter that I'm satisfied with. But the whole project is so daunting. I'm used to 1,000 word articles...

So, your pointers will certainly be helpful.

Thanks!

Permalink Reply by Sebastian on June 9, 2009 at 11:53am

Great advice, Eric; and thanks for hand-holding me thus far!

Now let's try and do some bigger, daddy steps...

Permalink Reply by Erin on June 9, 2009 at 10:15pm

The trouble that I keep having is who should be narrating the book. Practically every time I sit down to write something, this is what delays me. Currently, I have a main character who probably has mental problems. If I write from her perspective, I get to write about anything that happens to her or in her presence, and she can be an unreliable narrator of sorts, which will drag out the "is she crazy?" question that I want to pervade the book. If I write from the perspective of another character, I only get what happens in the presence of that character, but I get a clearer picture of my main character (I'm thinking Gatsby, here). I don't know that I've ever written from the perspective of a non-character narrator, and taking on that form seems really daunting. It may be the better choice, however, as I get what my main character is thinking and what's happening to her, as well as possibly things that happen to other characters (the only example off the top of my head is the way Stephen King does it in Black House).

Suggestions? If you've got a resource that I could look at, that would be helpful. I've been wanting to tell this story for months, but I can't start until I decide who's telling it.

Permalink Reply by Eric on June 9, 2009 at 10:48pm

I'd go with either a 3rd person narrator or the main character. While great novels can and have been written from the perspective of an outsider--famously, as you mentioned, Gatsby-- I think it's harder to pull off and less contemporary. People want to hear about the deranged, the off-kilter: look at Palahniuk. And, frankly, it makes less sense for me to have a story told immediately from one person away. I mean that, you state your story is about the potentially crazy character. Put that in real life and you can get the unadulterated experience from her, or you can hear it from her friend--who will have her own perspective on things, may not be entirely reliable herself. And you don't want the character to be flat, either. May as well make it 3rd person and not have to worry about it.

With 3rd person you can get an in on her crazy, and you retain a clarity of plot and style that you can't attain with any in-story narrator. You can still drop hints at her insanity in prose (it's called Independent Freestyle, if I recall: dipping a normally impartial voice into partiality) but you're much less likely to lose the reader.

The best example I know of for a crazy main character is American Psycho. Not the best book for plot, but Ellis is unmatched for his control, and he does an excellent job of portraying the slow and complete unraveling of Patrick Bateman's psyche.