Young Writers Society

YOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Yes it's me and I'm back again. Ha ha ha.

So we're getting to the end of this shizz. This is the bit where you make all the decisions. You probably have no idea what I'm talking about yet, you numbskulls, so I am going to reveal a Mitchell trade secret.

There are 10 questions I use that are the key to creation when I start writing. And they are these:

1. Is my protagonist going to be male/female?

2. Why are they going to be male/female?

3. How many drafts am I planning for this work?

4. How many chapters will be in this work?

5. Do I need an epilogue/prologue and why? (technically 2 questions, but let's not split fur)

6. How long will writing this take?

7. How many words am I aiming for?

8. Will this novel be based on something I have experienced, or imagined?

9. Which tense am I writing my novel in?

10. Which viewpoint am I writing this in? eg. omniscient, first person etc.

Now we examine each of these questions in turn to get a better deal out of them. You have to understand this shit to be able to plan properly. Unless you're a pantser and you want to just glide your way through the writing process and have no organisation whatsoever.

1. It's important to know why you're choosing a male or female, depending on: what type of audience you're trying to relate, who you are basing the character on, and whether you are male or female. In the Harry Potter example, think about how different the series would be, if Harry was a girl.

2. Why they are going to be male or female is the answer to the questions in the digression of chapter one. There is no right or wrong answer to this, you just need to think about. I guess JK Rowling made Harry a male because she wanted to. There's an interview with her about this, but I can't remember which one. Research if your own time if you wish.

3. As previously suggested, three is a good minimum. You can do more, you can do less, but obviously the quality will vary. Sometimes it's better to take a break between drafts, come back to the project with fresh ideas rather than rushing things in one go.

4. The number of chapters can be quite conventional, or not if you decide it to be so. I believe in the first book of the Harry Potter series there are 18 chapters but in the fifth book there are 38. So the number is up to you.

5. Epilogues and prologues can get a bit tedious, and sometimes they include unnecessary information - which is why they aren't included in the main body of the novel. So think very carefully if you need to tell the reader something outside of the story. I mean, JK Rowling put an epilogue in the last book of the HP series, but I think that was well justified by that point.

6. You can spend as long on writing a novel as you like. But a rushed job will mean more editing. The national novel in a month thingie, obviously encourages you to complete it within 4 weeks. But I imagine you've got something quite shitty to work wih. I don't how many attempts it took Rowling, but quite a few I imagine.

7. Word count depends on the genre, content, plan, intention and whatever else you have for your novel. But it has to be a minimum of 50,000 words if you want to make it a novel in the first place. The Philosopher's Stone was circa eighty-five thousand. Well over the limit for a "children's" book.

8. Where the main idea for the novel comes from is up to you, just make sure it is something you are enthusiastic about and willing to commit to. Remember JK Rowling's 17 years.

9. Present, past, future... Past is the most common. It is VERY difficult for anything but past tense novels to get published. All the Harry Potter books are written in the past.

10. Obviously, this is a personal choice. Harry Potter is written in the third person. One thing to bear in mind is that whichever POV you choose will alter the tone of the novel entirely. Imagine the HP series written in the first person viewpoint? Weird.

So there are the things you need to consider. If it looks a bit daunting, just take it one step at a time, or you could ignore it completely and just make it up as you go along.

And don't forget to pleasure yourselves in the meanwhile.

See you next time for Is Novel Writing Right For You?