Master the Process: From Idea to Novel

This was the first non-fiction this year. It was amazing that I could sit down,

read through it, and even enjoy taking notes. It took four days and I couldn't

wait to start writing my own stories. That might say something about the book

itself, the stage of my own learning, or both. As they say, when the student is

ready, the teacher appears.

 

The famous writer details how she approaches and develops a novel. It starts

with a simple idea, e.g., I want to write about a crime in Cornwall that

involves surfing. She follows up with what she calls location research during

which she creates a through line or plot kernel, which says who kills whom

and why. Next she creates the characters, 15 on average, and just writes down as

much as she could about each--a critical step called character analysis from

which the unique speeches and view points of the characters derive.

 

Now it comes to the actual writing. After the primary event which upends almost

everyone's life (each has a status quo before this), each character responds in

his or her own way and runs into conflicts over time. And "what's next" is

decided upon the interactions of these characters.

 

A creative endeavor within a framework, in short, is what the author shows us in

this book. It works for her because creating something out of thin air, the pure

artistic way, can be at times frustrating. She needs the anchor to feel

surefooted. The way she puts it is that the organized work, the research, and

the process appeal to her left brain and give the control she needs to free her

right brain in order to create.

 

The main challenge for me is to create unique voices for the characters which

comes down, again, to the knowledge of language, especially the idiomatic

expressions. But I am in the right direction.

 

I am happy that I read "Careless in Red" in advance as the book uses many parts

of it to illustrate the writing process.