HOW
TO WRITE A NOVEL IN TWELVE STEPS (#TWO)
STEP TWO: WHAT TO WRITE
·
This
is a tricky one.
·
Some
people like genre fiction: romance, action, dystopian, YA, sagas, adventure etc. Some people like to read literary work that defies genre.
·
There
are new genres being created. Go to the store, go to the library and most importantly find out what you like to read. When you consider what 'genre' to write, do you choose one or does it choose you?
·
THE
ANSWER: WRITE WHAT YOU ENJOY. WRITE WHAT YOU KNOW.
·
The
Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins is an example of YA dystopian fiction that has
never been ‘bigger’ but if you ask publishers they might tell you a new genre fad
is on its way…
·
I’d
be wary of following fads. Maybe not so wary of creating one!
·
Remember,
by the time you start writing a specific genre, publishers are preparing to
reveal a new ‘fad’. That said, I don’t think dystopian YA is a fad, I think
it’s here to stay (just like reality TV…) although I’m not comparing the two…
but when reality TV started to get popular, people said it would never last…
·
The
answer to the question of what you should write is:
·
Most
writers start off as readers. Readers know what they like to read and when they
read, they have a sense of what they want to write. So should you.
·
A
NOTE ON FIRST NOVELS:
·
Some
of my favourite novels are first novels (The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern,
for example & Harry Potter). Where would we be without the circus of dreams
or Harry and his friends? I am very glad those authors didn’t shelve those
novels indefinitely or give up in their quest to get published (assuming their
publishing processes weren’t ‘easy’. JK Rowling’s was tough – her agent
famously had to submit her novel to many publishers before it found a home.)
Neither she, nor her agent, gave up. We are glad they didn’t!
·
Then
again, they weren’t teenagers when they started and the writers I’ve just
mentioned weren’t inexperienced, clearly, even though they’d reportedly never
been published before. Both the writers I just mentioned had a good decade or
more of learning and adulthood behind them.
·
That
said some remarkable first novelists are teenagers. SE Hinton wrote The
Outsiders in high school. The Outsiders is one of my favourite teen novels of
all time.
·
So,
there are no rules about when to start or what to write about and no one person
ever knows everything.
·
You
should be the judge of what you’d like to write about, in the beginning, at
least. After you meet people in publishing, perhaps they might suggest something to
write about in advance. They may even pay you! (Where are those people?). Just
remember, once your work is out there, everyone else will be reading &
maybe judging it… So, make sure you’ve
chosen a genre you enjoy and given your manuscript time to marinate before
others read it and offer ‘advice’.
