Lady Dae Writes: it's not easy to write a novel

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How to write a Novel: What is Style?

This is another one of those terms writers throw around but I don’t know if they actually know the meaning of. A writer’s style is their unique trademark. It’s the way the writer uses words, plot devices, the tone they uses and the way they speak to their audience in order to tell their story. This particularly stand true for third person writing. Every writer has a unique style because essentially style is just the voice of the writers and even though they are all unique some styles are similar to each other. It’s like people’s voice patterns. The voice patterns can sound the same, but there’s something very unique about them. The same is with writing.

For instance my writing tends to be blunt and very straightforward. I don’t waste time on trying to sugarcoat what I’m saying to fool the reader with adverbs and adjectives. I write what I mean. That’s not to say that I don’t know how to mislead the reader with word choices. My style is taken common words that people think they know the meaning of, but whose meaning has changed depending on context and connotation. I like to mislead my readers by using words exactly as the definition states knowing that my readers don’t know the exact definition. It can be something as simple as the difference between sympathy and compassion (go look it up if you want to know the difference). I also have a dry wit and sarcastic sense of humor that many of my readers find funny.

I’m also very good at describing emotions in prose without it being purple and that more than makes up for the face that I’m not comfortable with writing romance or emotions in general, so that skill comes in handy.

Those are my trademarks and even though I have to tweak them to fit whatever genre or mood I’m trying to present. That’s how my sister can find my writings if they're online. My style can’t be missed.

So I know some of you are like “Omg! I don’t know what my style is!” But that’s okay. It took me not only years to be able to pinpoint exactly what my style and tone was, but also to perfect it, and I’m still trying to perfect it! But that’s okay. You’ll find it and here are some tips.

1) Write the story the way you would narrate it if it happened in real life.

The game is a little different when you’re writing first person, but definitely when you’re writing in third person (NTS: Write a post on POV by the end of the week). I tell my stories about my daily life the same way I would tell it when I write and I didn’t notice the correlation until a year or so ago.

2) Read the story out loud to yourself.

The way you read to yourself tells a lot about your style of writing. My writing has an eerie way of showing emotion and being calm at the same time and sometimes it’s hard to tell in my writing whether the narration is sarcastic or serious because there is some truth in what’s said. That’s that dry humor part of my writing. Others will be different.

3) Do you say what you mean and mean what you say?

Knowing what you meant when you wrote something and whether it comes across as what you meant or not can tell you a lot about your style.

4) Study other writers’ style.

Analyzing the style of other writers can help you pinpoint your own. It’s the same way with editing. If you edit other people’s stuff, you learn about the problems in your own work.

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Ideas and Execution

Willing Suspension of Disbelief
Showing Versus Telling

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How to Write a Novel: Willing Suspension of Disbelief

Don't worry if you haven’t heard of this phrase, but more or less, this is the thing every writer on the planet is worried about, well… every novelist anyway. What does this mean? Well, this is when the reader, knowing that an element in the writing is fantastical or can’t happen in real life, suspends their disbelief or saying something like, “that can’t happen in real life!” for the sake of the story. Most of the responsibility for this falls on the writer. So how do writers do this?

Well, characterization and the capturing of emotions can help, and believability of a character goes a long way. But while I always say that a writer can write whatever they want, a writer, even a fantasy writer, has limits.

When I say we writers can write whatever we want, I mean we can set whatever boundaries we want to set to write in. Writers aren’t restricted by the rules of society, meaning if we want someone to get away with murder, we can set that up. If we want someone to do something where the possibilities are slim to none, we can do that, but within the boundaries we set for the story.

Let’s use Harry Potter as an example. In Harry Potter, with the boundaries J.K. Rowling set for herself we all knew there was no way in hell Harry would beat Voldemort in a fight. I know he was a powerful wizard for his age and had done impossible things, but the odds that he could win a duel against a guy who was studying magic at least fifty years before Harry ever got to Hogwarts is slim to none. If J.K. Rowling had let that happen, she would have been breaking the rules she had quite clearly established.

Thankfully, J.K. Rowling knows how to set up a story for all her bad romance (no writer is perfect) and so she was able to spin a believable tale and essentially, Harry won by a stroke of luck and pure genius on Rowling’s part. Hate that it happened that way all you want, but she stuck to her own rules, and it was a believable way for Harry to defeat Voldemort because Harry is just not all powerful.

So that’s what I mean when I say we can write whatever we want. I mean that writers can set their own boundaries, but once you establish them and the reader knows the established boundaries, a writer can’t break them. That’s what fanfiction is for. Let the readers do that if they want to.

But this responsibility is not solely on the writer. The reader has to be willing to suspend their disbelief and say, “This is just a story. I know these things cannot happen, but I have to assume that these things could happen if they were possible.” Many people have the ability to do this, but some people just don’t. My mother is a prime example. There’s only so far she’ll go when suspending her disbelief so she was a little dismayed when she found out I was writing fantasy. I’m the type of person that says as long as you abide by your own rules, you can do whatever you want which is the reason I have such a problem with Stephanie Meyer. She breaks her own rules in Twilight which removes the believability factor for me. The plots of the last two books read like bad fanfiction to me which goes back to the thing about the writer setting boundaries and sticking to them in combination with the character development.

So a lot of factors play in the ‘willing suspension of disbelief,’ but the most particular thing is staying within the limits of the boundaries the writer sets for themselves.

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In Defense of the Fantasy Writer

Character Casting

I can’t believe they just said that…

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How to Write a Novel: Facing the Blank Page

Nothing, absolutely nothing, is more intimidating to a writer than a blank page, which brings up the question, were to start? I mean, you open a new document to start you new story and there’s the blank page. It really puts into perspective the work of the writer. Sure in about 50k words it’s less daunting, but initially it seems impossible, no matter how short or long the work will be, a writer always asks themselves, can they do it?

I ask myself this every time I start a new novel and this doubt is what makes me procrastinate for up to weeks at a time until I finally get myself in gear and sit myself in a chair and start. But this is a real issue for writers. How do you start a novel? Is it as easy as sitting in a chair and writing? Yes and no. It’s one thing to sit in a chair and pull up a document with the intention to write, but that doesn’t mean you are going to write. I know. It happens to me. So here are some tips to get started or rather how to get started. First thing first. Pour a cup of coffee, your favorite tea, drink, whatever and get high on the stuff, now…

Set the mood

This is an excellent way to get started, a description of the feelings, the tone, rain or sun and all kind of stuff. Getting the setting straight, but be careful not make this a big info dump session. Whether this is the beginning of a scene, a chapter, or novel, draw the word with vivid description, but make sure it’s not purple prose. Not only is this great for the reader, but it puts the writer in the actual place and the writing will start to flow.

Start with Dialogue

Usually, the character making a statement to reflect the situation, not only helps get the story started and the writer started, but also helps set the mood and the voice of the character. Some people say don’t do this, but I say if it works and as long as you’re not doing so for every single chapter, use it to get started and if you need to, cut the dialogue later during revision, but if it gets you rolling, go with it.

Make a General Statement

They say to show, don’t tell, but a general short telling statement goes a long way in setting the mood and getting the story started. Nothing long, but just a short three or four words, maybe five, but the shorter they are, the better. This is the best way for me to get a story started or anything for that matter. A short phrase can pack a powerful punch and then you can get started.

So don’t be intimidated by the blank page. When all else fails, just start writing and revise later.

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The First Page

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How to Write a Novel: The Antagonist doesn’t have to be a Person

I know. I know. I did a blog post on antagonists, but I did one on antagonist in the form of people and characters. That’s just one type of antagonist, An antagonist is someone or something that stands in the way of the goal of the protagonist. It’s that simple. By that definition, it means that your antagonist doesn’t have to be evil although they commonly are. The types of antagonists have grown over the years. There used to be three mainly, but now there are usually six and it’s not always the same six either. So I’m going to do this my own way because it seems like some of them are just sub-antagonists types of another group. So here they are.

Man versus Man

This is the obvious one. The antagonist is a man and it’s very common throughout writing and literature, even if one of the other types show up at the main antagonist. This is a physical person standing in the way of the protagonists. Examples of this are Joker, Voldemort, Dracula (in the original novel), The Vultori (I think I spelled that right), and Team Rocket.

Again, these people don’t have to be evil. They just have to get in the way of the protagonist. Say in your novel, two girls, are vying for the affections of some guy (cliché, but it works). One of the girls is your antagonist and one girl is your protagonist. In a novel, we’re always in the side of the protagonist, but that doesn’t mean the antagonist is evil. The antagonist in this case can be her sister, her cousin, her best friend, or simply her school rival, but the reason she is the antagonist is because she’s standing in the way of the protagonist getting the guy she wants.

Sub-version: Man versus Society

Some make this one its own separate category, but I don’t. Society (or culture, government, tradition etc…) is determined by man. It’s determined by the thinking of man and therefore, society man versus man, but a larger body of man and how they think. This is things like the situation in V for Vendetta. Batman is kind of like this in recent incarnations. The overall plot and storyline of Star Wars can fall into this category too (The Empire, the Sith, oppression, even the Jedi in some).

Man versus Self

This doesn’t mean the protagonist is literally battling himself, but what it does mean is that the protagonist is facing a moral dilemma or a difficult choice or is unhappy about something with themselves and wants to change it. The antagonist is internal or an idea. It’s like Juno (I hate this movie, but it’s an obvious example). Her dilemma is whether or not to give her baby up for adoption.

In that new movie Charlie Saint Cloud (Zac Efron’s in it), his dilemma is breaking his promise to the ghost of his brother. Even in Harry Potter there is an internal conflict with Harry, especially in the second one, where he wonders if he’s good or not, is he really the person he thinks he is and he wonders this throughout the series. No subversion in this one, at least not to me. It’s very straightforward.

Man versus Nature

It’s really self explanatory. The antagonist is nature and the protagonists goal is to survive. It’s that simple. Movies really love to play on this, but books do too. The problem is that I read a little too much in my niche (which is fantasy) or not enough in some cases (blame that on school), but anyway to give examples, this is stuff like what if the world goes into another ice age, the poles suddenly change, natural disasters, diseases breaks out and kills most of the population etc… In other words, it’s all about the protagonists trying to survive until they can get to a safe haven or something. There’s usually a lot of science involved to explain these phenomena.

Sub-version: Man versus the Supernatural

The supernatural, as I’ve seen defined, are events in nature that can’t be explained through science, at least not yet. The proof? It was original thought by the people of the time that the black plague was a curse from witches and that the flu had something to do with the stars. So anything supernatural can technically fall under nature from vampirism, to zombie attacks, to ghost, spirits etc… I count it as just a subtopic of nature. I mean the word is super-natural.

Man versus Technology

With the advent of technology, there are all kind of horror stories going around about if technology gets out of control and begins to control humanity or if some computer virus gets out of hand and takes control. It’s a little farfetched sometimes, but the fact of the matter is that there isn’t a lot that isn’t control by some aspect of technology. Even gas stoves have a little technology in them and the thing is man makes technology to be smart and damn near error free. It sometimes catches things the human eye can’t (I wish Microsoft word’s proofreader were better in that aspect…) and it can outsmart the human mind if the chess game I play on the computer is any indication.

This was what The Matrix was all about and it was really one of the earliest (correct me if I’m wrong) horror stories of technology getting way out of hand and overpowering humanity. The thing about computers is that their very logical so if you need a weakness or a way to beat technology in your novel, confuse the hell out of technology by making man do something that’s completely irrational as man can sometimes be.

So now the question is, which one do you choose to have in your novel. (Shrugs) It doesn't have to be just one. It can be a combination of two or three of them if you want, but it really depends on the novel and the style of writing. Pick the one that works best for you.

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Creating a Fictional Character: The Antagonist

Stakes, Risks, and a whole lot of Tension

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How to Write a Novel: Stakes, Risks, and a whole lot of Tension

So I also go this topic from reading the forums on absolute write, a very helpful site in itself that’s in my blogroll. Anyway, a topic came up about the stakes and risks rising and understandably, many of the participants on the forum were a little confused. Tension rises, but the stakes and the risk don’t have to increase. They can stay just the same. Quick question though. What are the stakes?

The stakes are the things is liable to be lost or events that will possibly happen if the protagonist does not accomplish his or her goal, in other words, losing the conflict her has with the antagonist, whatever that may be. Risks are basically the same thing in this sense, although your protagonist can take risks that will get them closer to the goal or further away. The writer can raise the stakes, meaning the protagonist gets something else to worry about that will happen as a result of not accomplishing the goal, but the stakes don’t have to raise. They can stay pretty much the same.

Someone is probably in their head saying. That’s not true. The stakes always have to raise. Uh… no. They don’t. I think what writers and readers mistaken as a rising of the stakes is just the protagonist gaining a better understanding of the stakes. From that understanding, the protagonist over the course of the book begins to care more about accomplishing their goal. It’s not that the stakes have risen, but the character is making much more of a big deal about it that he or she might have been in the beginning.

Let’s take Harry Potter. In the first book, all Harry knew was that Voldemort was this evil wizard who wanted to come back with the sorcerer’s stone, but everything was good. He had his two best friends, and he was happy However, by the time Voldemort comes back and the sixth book rolls around, there’s considerable more stress on Harry’s part about Voldemort. Why? Well because Voldemort’s back now for one and that makes his threat a hell of a lot more real, not to mention now he’s beginning to understand why Voldemort can come back and why he was never completely vanquished. The stakes are still the same. The stakes are basically the safety and security of the wizarding world for the whole series (throw in Harry’s life somewhere too, but we all knew he was going to survive).

Well, what did rise? The tension of course. Tension is caused by the conflict and when the conflict is agitated and there is more understanding of what the stakes the tension rises. Tension is just the hostility and the stress caused between two characters and that’s why the further along in a novel you get, the more the reader wants to know what happens (or should want to anyway) because a person should be able to sense it in the writing. How do you resolve? Well, the climax tends to do that.

It’s like this. Two people can’t stand each other. Now lock them in the same room. More than likely, they will purposely do things just to irk each other. Leave then in that room a little too long and undoubtedly they’ll get to fighting. Win, lose, or stalemate though, it’s going to be a while before they get at odds again because they’ve released the hostility and tension from before. That’s what a novel is except usually, a protagonist defeats the antagonist for good, relieving the tension and hostility for good, unless you’re dealing with a series compiling a bunch of little battles at the end of each book before the final showdown in the last.

So that’s what it is folks. Know the difference between stakes, risks, and tension, because it will come back to bite you in the butt hard if you don’t pull it off right. The stakes can stay the same, but for the explosion that is the climax to be believable, the tension has to rise.

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How to Write a Novel: Ideas and Execution

Ideas are a dime a dozen, sometimes you’ll find them for a nickel. Yeap, they’re cheap and easy to come by. Some of you newbie writers who are reading this are gasping in shock. You mean ideas are worth nothing? No. Ideas are worth everything. Everything story starts with an idea. My novel started with this sole idea: A YA female character who was a hero that could rival the big boys like Harry Potter, but be the same insecure girl that Bella in Twilight always is. I wanted a teenage girl hero who was nothing to be played with, but didn’t shun her femininity. That was the idea and just about a million other authors have had the same idea over the years. Idea’s are the skeletons, the bare bones, and worth close to nothing on their own. The execution is what’s worth something. You see when it comes to writing novels, there’s no such thing as a bad idea. You can take what appears to be a worthless idea and make it new through execution.

Well, what is execution? I like to call execution the clothes for an idea. It’s all about how you dress up the idea to make it shine, dazzling, and new and unless you started the trend, you never want to see someone else in the everlasting party of books who’s dressed up just like yours. That means your book isn’t unique. That means your execution isn’t different or exploring new angles and ways to look at it.

Let’s take the vampire story. Let’s say your idea is that girl falls in love with vampire and is pulled into vampire world. Let’s face it. That’s nothing new, but let’s say when we take away all the creative devices and plot, that’s what we have. Now depending on what you want to tone you want is what will make your book different. Let’s say you want the ideal pretty much-PG rated stuff with vampires who fight for humanity, vampires who fight against humanity, a distinct line between the good guys and the bad guys, and people who get married and then have sex. That means you end up with Twilight or something along those lines when there’s that kind of tone.

Now let’s take that same idea, girl falls in love with vampire and sucked into their world, but this time you’re writing something more R-rated. I’m talking about like Blood that Bond (You can find it on Barnes and Noble), where vampires rock a fine line between good and evil, drink human blood and only care about humanity because it’s their next meal, have lots of graphic sex, and, I’m quoting for this next one, where vampires actually cum (that’s exactly what one of my college buddies said). Same idea, much different execution.

If we want something that falls right in between that I know of, it would be that Vampire Knight manga I read. It’s got the vampires who fight for humanity and try to stay away from human blood so they can live in peace with humans, but at the same time you don’t know if the good guys is actually the bad guy, the vampires impale quite a few people, the good guy slaughters the vampire council and the main coupling are siblings.

So do you see my point? It’s all about execution. Harry Potter wasn’t the first book about a boy who goes to a magic boarding school to learn magic, hers was just one of the ones that appealed to a massive audience and stood out because of the J.K.’s ability to world-build (we’ll get to that one later). Anyway, here are some examples of stories with the same idea, but vastly different execution in not just the novel world, but movies, manga, anime, cartoon, etc…

Vampire Knight, Blood that Bonds, Twilight: Girl falls in love with vampire and is sucked into vampire world

Batman and Iron Man: Billionaire playboys become superheroes through technology.

Sailor Moon, Cardcaptor Sakura, Tokyo MewMew: Girls get magical power to defeat antagonist to the world.

Harry Potter, Tapestry Series, Percy Jackson: Boy goes off to learn to control magic powers and ends up fighting super bad antagonist who’s trying to take over.

See? When you strip a book to its bare idea, the ideas are the same, but the execution is what makes them unique.

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How to Write a Novel: Parts of the Novel

This is like awesomely late. I tried to do it at school, but then the internet went out and then we went shopping for a stove because ours just went bad. So I'm sorry, but life happens. Anywho, it took me a while to figure out what this blog post was going to be about because I wasn’t sure what aspect of the novel to write about. But I figured the best bet, if I wanted to go in some type of chronological order, the parts of the novel was what I needed to go to next. So let’s talk about it.

Exposition/The Inciting Incident

These two terms are interchangeable, but nowadays we writers are more prone to call it an Inciting Incident. Why? Because we curse exposition because newbies usually associate it with boring info dumps where we get the complete damn background story of the characters and don’t get to the actual story until chapter three. I know. I did it when I started. But at one point, that used to be okay. Back in the eighteen hundreds when it was mostly wealthy men and woman reading these things and they had nothing better to do than read all day because unlike the working class, they didn’t have to work all day. Fast forward, two hundred years later, the pages of exposition and background doesn’t work anymore. Why? Well I said it before. The audience changed and though people have more time, we live in a fast paced world where the internet and the next television series is a click away and people want some entertainment before they have to get up for work in the morning and do an eight page essay to do in three hours while high on caffeine. We have time, but not the time to sit and read background when we’re expecting a vampire story or something! The audience is impatient. So cut the three chapters and the prologue and get to the story. Sprinkle the background somewhere in between. Incite the story, get it moving.

Anyway, the inciting incident is the event that spurs the events of the rest of the story. It’s that simple. Get to it, don’t spend too much time on it, move on.

Rising Action

This is where the inciting incident that got the ball rolling gets much more complicated. Let’s put it like this. Inciting incident, Bella moves to Forks. She meets the Cullens. Edward is stalking her. Oh man, Edward can read her mind. Oh damn! He’s a vampire who’s this close to draining her dry, and she’s in love with him. Oh shit! This psycho vampire is after Bella because of her sweet smelling blood and to spite Edward. Oh hell! James got her and….

See what I mean. Something that began so simple got that much more complicated. The only reason I used twilight is because everyone has read it just about and it’s probably the simplest plot to dissect into that. The tension builds in this part and things just keep getting worse and worse and worse until…

The Climax

This is where (pardon the expression) the shit hits the fan and Edward battles it out with James! Some people call it a turning point. This is where the outcome will be decided, whether good or evil with triumph. This is usually marked by some big fight (in fantasy) or huge conflict where the protagonist faces the antagonist (whatever that may be) head on and proceeds to overcome or be overwhelmed by the antagonist. This is where we’re biting our fingernails and can’t turn the page fast enough to see what the outcome is, where the protagonist takes all the information, power, tricks, and lessons learned throughout the story to overcome, usually anyway. Or you can just do like Bella and pass out. Anyway,

The Falling Action/ Resolution

These two parts are usually kind of blended together although some people separate it. I’m blending it. This is usually where we get the outcome, who won the big fight. The dust clears and it’s revealed who the winner is (Pokemon loves to do this). Anyway, it doesn’t mean the protagonists has won or even that the antagonist has won, not completely anyway. The fact of the matter is that the battle or conflict is over and marked by a lesson learned by the protagonist, or a growth to a new level, or how the protagonist is better off (or maybe not if we’re dealing with a tragedy). Either way, we usually get a little bit of what happened afterward and some question are answered, issues resolved, and most loose ends ties. Generally, we end up back where we began at a new level. You don’t have to neatly resolve everything. Writers are free to “accidentally” leave some loose ends untied to make room for a sequel, imply that the novel was just one part of a bigger conflict, but the conflict that needed to be resolved in that particular novel is done. In other words, we ride away from Hogwarts on the Hogwarts Express… but there’s always next school year (for anyone living under a rock, that was a Harry Potter reference).

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How to Write a Novel: Genres Part Two

I’m just continuing the genres, so no need for another introduction:

Suspense and Thriller

Like Sci-fi and Fantasy, these two genres always seem to be mentioned together and while like the sci-fi and fantasy, they can closely intertwine, they aren’t the same. The thing is, they have some of the same conventions and characteristics.

Then what is the difference? Well, from what I’ve read, the suspense has a pacing that’s a tad slower than the thriller. In the thriller, a lot of different things are happening at once and you really have to pay attention. Suspense is a little easier to follow than this and the threat tends to be more focused on the protagonist that the thriller, which may be more focus on a threat to humanity and that makes it all the more complicated. In other words, both genres are notorious for a fast plot.

These two genres are almost never paired alone. I swear, every time I see this it can be paired with another genre. The fantasy thriller, the suspense mystery, the romantic thriller… Of course, a story can be just a thriller, but there’s always some mystery or something that needs to be found out in a thriller or suspense.

But the most important thing about this genre is that it’s famous for its ability to create tension in the novel and the audience to the point where you have to know, where your heart pounds in your chest because you know that if the protagonist fails, the entire world is going to hell or at least just the main character. Some conventions are:

Fast plot

The mystery

Murders, assassinations

Government conspiracies

Tension

Technology is the enemy

Former spies, agents etc…

World as a setting (a lot different countries)

Resourceful protagonist

Antagonist is a world power

A lot more…

Mystery

It’s exactly what it says. The main plot is centered around trying to find out something and it doesn’t necessarily have to be solving a crime. It’s often paired with thriller and suspense, but a mystery doesn’t have to be fast paced like those two genres. But like suspense and thriller, mystery is notorious for building the tension and laying it on thick. Many genres have some aspect of the mystery in them, but what makes a novel a mystery is that the focus is on the mystery. Sure Harry Potter had to figure out who the heir of slytherin was and what exactly was the beast of the chamber of secrets, but the story wasn’t a mystery. In my novel, my protagonist has to figure some things out, but it’s certainly not a mystery because it doesn’t focus on the mystery of it. Nancy drew? Certainly a mystery because she’s always actively trying to solve the mystery. Sherlock Holmes? He’s a detective. Enough said. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde? Yes. The story focuses on trying to figure out who this man is committing these hideous acts and they find out what it is.

The thing that makes a mystery is not the pace and not even the tension, but the complexity, yet simplicity of the plot. It’s the subtle things that make the mystery. They’re notorious for making you look in one direction and all the evidence points to it, but come to find out the real evidence and the real solution is everything the reader turns a blind eye to. Conventions are:

False leading

Something that needs to be found out

A crime that needs to be solved

Protagonist actively trying to solve the mystery

Nothing is ever what it seems

No one is ever who they seem

Detectives

An old house

A lot more…

The Horror

These are your scary movies. Everything that’s about ghost and the supernatural and although fantasy tends to have the supernatural, the thing about the horror is that its intent is to scare the audience. Now whether this is done through suspense, monster from the underworld trying to kill, death trying to catch up with the characters, the intent is to freak the hell out of the audience. You don’t even really have to know what the spook factor is. The reason Paranormal Activity was so successful is because we were never actually sure what the hell it was haunting the characters. Sure it was said to be a demon, but we never actually saw the demon. We just saw some footprints, a sheet drifting, and the lights swinging, but the fact that we never actually saw what it was, especially when it dragged her out the bed, is part of the scare factor. Add in the fact that there was no music to warn you what was about to happen, and that makes for one good movie. A spirit that follows you and can’t be gotten rid of.

There are other scary ones too, but I love the ones where it’s not clear what the horror factor is, but we know it’s scaring the hell out of us. This genre often has mystery elements in it, but it doesn’t always have to be solved. Horror can allow the mystery to never be solved. Some conventions are:

The haunted house

Gore (as in the slasher movies)

Monster that’s never seen

Isolation of the group of characters

Things that go bump in the night

The Night

Curses

Possessions

Demons

Vengeful Spirits, ghost

Mysterious forces (not really ghost or spirits)

A lot more….

So these are all the main genres, and anything else just falls somewhere under it or is an audience. YA isn’t a genre. It’s an audience. All genres can have adventure and action, even the romance. Women’s fiction is just fiction that appeals to women. A gothic novel has it's own conventions, but usually falls under one of the main genres. The thing about genres is that you don’t have to choose just one. They can cross and match and mix. I’m a fantasy writer, but I can write a damn good romance too. So those are the genres. Tomorrow… Well nothing tomorrow. It’s my day off. I’ll post something up here though.

For more information go to this website

Novel Writing Help: Genres

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How to Write a Novel: Genres Part One

So how many genres are there? A lot depending on who you ask. According to dictionary.com, a genre is “a class or category of artistic endeavor having a particular form, content, technique, or the like.” And this works because genres do have a particular form, content, or technique that distinguishes them from the other genres. So let’s talk about these genres and the difference.

The Romance

These are always about trials and tribulations of relationships whether the main coupling is already in a relationship or the writers is trying to get them there. Either way, there’s always something (the person’s uncertainties, insecurities, school, job etc.) or someone making the relationship difficult or stopping it from happening all together, and the main coupling has to overcome that.

Romance is also all about the emotions. Yes a kiss and physical intimate moments can be in them, but those are the essential for erotica romances. But it’s the emotionally intimate moments, the emotional obstacles, as well as the things that threaten to ruin the current or future relationship that make a good romance. It doesn’t have to be passionate love and feelings at first sight or it doesn’t have to be that way and they’ve been together a while. Romance is about the growth of a romantic relationship despite the obstacles. It doesn’t have to have a happy ending but it doesn’t have to. In fact, I love the bittersweet romance. Anyway, here are some conventions of the romance:

The love triangle

Forbidden love

The unlikely pair

Love at first site (I hate this one most of the time)

Hate at first site (the pair starts off hating each other)

Soul mates

Temporary heartbreak

Heartache

Internal antagonists (doubt, fear, insecurities etc…)

External antagonists (the person who doesn’t want the relationship to happen)

Beauty and the beast or geek, or jerk, etc….

Coincidental meetings

Fate and Destiny

Many more than I can name….

The Science Fiction

Notice that I don’t pair this with fantasy and I hate when people do it because there is a big difference between the two genres. Anyway, Sci-fi is typically in a futuristic world with all sorts of advancements like flying cars, devices that can teleport, aliens, ships travelling a light-speed to different galaxies, you name it. It can appear to be fantasy, and some sci-fi’s dance around that line, but the thing that distinguishes it from fantasy is that the things you see are in the realm of future scientific possibilities. This means that all of this is just high form of high science that may be possible in the real world one day through advancements in science. Star Trek is a prime example. Anyway some conventions are:

Flying cars

Travel between galaxies

Contact with aliens or non-human races

Inter-dimensional space travel

Advance brain capacity (telepathy telekinesis)

Discovery of new species

Cloning

High tech computers

Everyone has a spaceship to go visit their family who lives on another planet

Manny more than I can name

Fantasy

So if fantasy isn’t sci-fi, then what is it? Fantasy is whatever the imagination can come up with and isn’t bound by realistic scientific possibilities. Its only boundaries are the writer’s imagination. In other words, anything and I mean anything can happen. This is where myth and folklore come into play. Anything and I mean anything goes. From elves, to dragons, to vampires, to magic, witches, warlocks, sorceresses… You name it.

There’s the urban fantasy which takes place in the real world where magic or fantasy isn’t the norm but creeps up which is what I write or something like Twilight (ugh). Then there’s the rural fantasy which is a straight up fantasy world where magic is the norm even though everyone has it and they believe it exists. These can take place in medieval times where people actually believed it existed or a completely made up magical world. In rural fantasy, there can sometimes be a lacking of scientific development because magic is the norm, like in Eragon or Tamora Pierce’s novels. Then there’s the something in between which is what I call Harry Potter. It has traces of urban and rural mixed together. Some conventions are:

The hero adventure

Magic, witches and warlocks

Vampires

Elves

Mind Control

Magical Creatures

Fantastic worlds

Castles and Palaces

Anything your imagination can come up with

Wow… This article has gotten long and I’m about to go out of town, so stay tuned for Genres part two tomorrow.

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How to Write a Novel: Types of Novels

I actually had to do a bit of research for this one because I wasn’t quite sure what was meant by the types of novel. When I say type, I generally mean genre fiction, literary, and mainstream, not the genres themselves. So I read a little bit of everything to see if I could find a consensus and this is what I found:

Genre Fiction:

It’s exactly what it is. It’s the fiction with the genres like romance, fantasy, sci-fi, etc and its commercial, meaning it appeals to the masses and is usually sold in more quantities that literary or genre. This kind of novel is all about plot, what happens, how it happens and exciting the reader to build tension, get to the climax, and finally resolve it (did that sound just a tad wrong to you?).

The thing about this one, so I’ve read, is that it generally has rules and conventions that you have to conform to and when I say that, I mean that if you were writing a fantasy novel the number one thing you have to have is the fantasy, a protagonist thrust into fantasy world or already in one and forced to find their way in it etc… In a typical romance, you need the guy and the girl who mutually like each other someone, the doubt and uncertainty of the relationship, the struggles and obstacles that can prevent them from being together etc. There’s usually a set way to write them and readers expect them. That’s not to say that you can’t break the convention every once in a while, but the reader has to instantly be able to recognize the genre.

Literary

This is the type of novel that’s driven by the characters and internal conflict more so than an external one. It’s all about people relating to each other and not so much what’s going on around them. In other words, there’s more emphasis on characterization that plot. More emphasis, but not that there isn’t one people. Things do happen in literary fiction, but they’re not nearly as dramatic as the plots in genre fiction

And this type of fiction doesn’t really have a prescribed set of conventions that have to be followed. You can break all the conventions of romance or a mystery in this one. But literary fiction is also more careful about the choice of words and what they mean. It’s kind of like writing poetry. Word choice is very important in it, but that does not mean it’s filled with purple prose and flowery wording. It would probably read something like the stuff that my college tends to make me study in my literature classes, but not nearly as boring I hope.

There is also a more prominent theme running through it. It’s always subtle, but not dressed up by everything else that’s going on. It’s written to make a statement about a theme or humanity in general.

Mainstream Fiction

This is difficult to define, but I’ll go with these definitions. Mainstream fiction is fiction that is genre fiction, but breaks the conventional rules, literary fiction that ends up appealing to the masses, or it’s something that’s not genre fiction as it doesn’t have a particular genre, but doesn’t make a statement about humanity or based on some theme and doesn’t have all the careful word choice... Confused? Me too. You know what? Just go to this link:

Novel Writing Help

He took the time to explain all of that in more detailed sequence on that site. I just did a general sum up. If you’re still confused, don’t try to go looking for a concrete definition of mainstream fiction. Every agent, writer, publisher and editor is going to have a different idea…

Up tomorrow is something I’m more familiar with. Genres!

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The Novel

Novels as we know them now are at least 50k+ word fiction books usually written for entertainment of the reader. But the novel has come a long way since it was first introduced. However, I’m not here to get into the real meat of the history of the novel because that would be too much research and I’m not taking my class on the novel until next fall. But am going to get into the history of the reader and the difference between the audiences we’re going for as opposed to two hundred years ago.

Two hundred years ago, not everyone could write a novel and nor did they have the time. The novel also wasn’t something for everyone to read. Before technology, people didn’t have the time to read a novel. Novels were for the rich and the upper middle class because they had the time on their hands to read it unlike the working class who could barely earn enough money for food let alone a novel, not to mention when would they have the time to read it? Therefore the writer’s audience were people who were educated and had class which was why most of your MC’s back then had some class or money. Look at Dracula, Frankenstein, Jane Eyre, Pride and Prejudice. The characters in them are either struggling middle class, upper middle class, or upper class because that’s who their audience related to. And no one wanted to read about normal people. They weren’t ‘interesting.’

And the writers? They had to have the time to write them in a time where novels had to be written and rewritten entirely by hand, at least until the invention of the typewriter and that came with its own set of problems. Anyway, if you pay attention and do some research, most of these writers had some money from somewhere or used to (Jane Austen might be an exception. She and her family struggled). But the point was it took a certain type and class of person to write a novel.

Now let’s move up to 2011. There’s a big difference between the 18th century writer and the 21^st. For one, the readership has changed, and there are more people, who have the time to read a novel. So that means a wider readership, a diverse set of likes and dislikes, and a lot of different people to appeal to. Next there was the invention of the word processor. Not only can you make up quick documents and write a novel easily on it, but you don’t have to rewrite an entire page to or chapter when you want to change something or add a scene! Then the internet came and now a person has unlimited access to information and the way to write a novel, so now you don’t have to be an English Major or study too extensively. If you need to know something, it’s usually as easy as a google search. This sounds like a good thing and it is, but this comes with its own set of problems too.

The above paragraph means that anybody can write a novel now! There’s no excuse not to write one. Everyone has a story to tell, and they want to tell it. The good thing is that though anybody can write a novel, not everybody will because even with how easy it’s been made, not everyone has the will to sit and write a novel. It seems easy, but technology has played us for fools. It’s not as easy as it seems. It’s just the technology has made it easier to go about. And let’s not even talk about the advances in psychology and this idea of making things realistic…

Then the readership and audience has gotten so diverse, you have to find your niche. Not only that though, because it’s gotten easier to write a book and there are so many writers out there vying for the attention of an audience, you better damn well know how to distinguish yourself and your voice so that you stand out.

So this is what we’re dealing with folks, not only us novelist, but writers in general. Just try and calculate the odds. You still want to write this novel? Well, if you’re still here, good. This month, for those willing to sit on their butts for hours and type, I’m going to try and help you make this journey as easy as possible. So sit back for the month and enjoy the ride.

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How to write a Novel: What is Style?

How to Write a Novel: Willing Suspension of Disbelief

How to Write a Novel: Facing the Blank Page

How to Write a Novel: The Antagonist doesn’t have to be a Person

How to Write a Novel: Stakes, Risks, and a whole lot of Tension

How to Write a Novel: Ideas and Execution

How to Write a Novel: Parts of the Novel

How to Write a Novel: Genres Part Two

How to Write a Novel: Genres Part One

How to Write a Novel: Types of Novels

The Novel