Steps Writing Novel
Steps Writing Novel
Improve Your Novel Writing By Reading…Bad Books
It goes without saying that you can learn a great deal about writing by reading the classics. Advice on writing novels is like carbon dioxide – it is free and everyone is exhaling it. Still, few will tell you that there is value in reading bad books. Well, there is and you should definitely do so.
Great books are often perfect examples of how to develop characters, plot lines and so on. I strongly believe, however, that to really grasp these concepts you have to experience it done poorly. If you don’t know Bad Writing, how will you know good writing? For every W. Somerset Maugham classic like Razor’s Edge, you should read something that gets poor ratings from readers on Amazon or whatever rating site you prefer.
Why would you want to suffer through a bad book? Well, the answer is found in figuring out why you don’t like it. This requires you to both take notes and suffer through the tome. The key is to uncover the details that make it painful to pursue and write them down. Is the plot to slow? Is there no apparent plot? Is it a novel with far too many storylines going on? Are the characters so undeveloped that you can find no attachment to any of them? The reasons can be numerous and often are!
Once you’ve deduced the nature of the problem or problems, the next step is not to mock that writing but to focus on yours. Do any of the problems in the book in question apply to your writing? Be honest! If not, what would you do to solve the problems in that novel? Would those steps in any way benefit your writing? You might find that they would.
Once completed, it is time to do a comparison between a quality classic novel and the bad book you’ve read. Write down your thoughts on the good and bad manner in which character development is handled in each book. Do the same for the plot and so on. By contrasting each of these elements, the difference between the good and bad aspects of writing should become clearer to you.
There is one final lesson to take from the bad book. That lesson is to recognize that it was actually published. The idea of publishing a novel is one that is often touted as being this side of discovering the cure for cancer. Well, it can’t be that hard or the bad book in your hand would never have been published!
About the Author
Thomas Ajava writes for NomadJournals.com - your source for writing journals you can keep notes and diaries in.
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Land an Agent With Your Multicultural Novel
Dr. Martin Luther King's dream comes alive better at no other place in the book publishing industry than at a literary agency. It seems that just about every single agency is encouraging writers to submit multicultural projects, especially those with strong multicultural main characters. Why is that? Well, quite simply, it's because that is what editors and publishers are constantly asking for and seeking.
You can see some examples of personalized query letters that landed my clients writing multicultural books an agent here: http://tinyurl.com/67f8hf4
I'll tell you another reason. There are many advocates, both of color and not, who are adamant about increasing literacy for multicultural communities, and what better way to do that than to have novels starring multicultural plots and multicultural leads? These advocates are on your side, constantly pushing the industry to publish more and more multicultural books, making it a hot genre to get involved in right now. Not only will you be writing a highly sought after novel, but you'll also be helping the multicultural community by writing novels featuring a strong lead.
That being said, you should keep a few things in mind. One is, if you've written what many would classify as the "urban novel," please beware. About five years ago or so, nothing was hotter, but nowadays, there are only certain agencies looking for a novel like that. Thing change, though. Since then, the market has become oversaturated with self-published, sloppily edited & written versions of those bad direct-to-video ghetto movies that they couldn't give away at Blockbuster. Urban novels jus aren't where it's at these days.
Write the perfect query letter for your multicultural novel by visiting some examples at: http://tinyurl.com/67f8hf4
What agents seeks now are mainstream novels that just happen o have people of color as the protagonist. A witty sidekick is nice, but a strong lead character, like Lauren in Alisa Valdes-Rodriquez's Dirty Girls Social Club, is even better. So do some research. Read books that feature a strong lead character of color that have been highly successful to get a feel for the kind of material that agents and publishers are looking for these days and then put your own personal tough and twist on it.
Create a strong plot with strong characters who happen to be of color, and you'll be one step closer to landing a literary agent with your Multicultural novel.
About the Author
Need help writing your query letter? Visit:
http://www.HowtoWriteaQueryLetter.com
