the craft. quick and dirty tips on novel writing.

This week, I’m sharing some quick and dirty tips on novel writing that I’ve been learning along the way. As I’ve mentioned before, it’s interesting how selling your book in many ways feels like the end when it’s the beginning of a new journey.

If I can be honest, I had no idea what I was doing when I started writing a book. I knew I had a knack for storytelling and that I’d read a lot of books. But I had no formal training in novel writing, which we’ve talked about here on the craft before. So this experience is teaching me a lot. This will either help me with the newer projects I’m working on or cause me to overthink, but only time will tell.

There are a lot of things I think I’m good at naturally. That includes dialogue, distinguishing characters from one another, building a setting, showcasing emotions. But there are also a lot of places where I need work. Which is normal. I’m not in my final form and I’m not yet the best writer I will become. Hopefully, I have a long career in front of me.

With that said, I wanted to share a couple of thoughts on things I needed to work on to improve my story to help you in your process as well.

Pacing. As a former track runner, I immediately understand the idea of pacing. In a race, essentially, if you give it all the gas at the top, you are likely going to run out of energy before the finish line. You have to find a pace that will conserve energy, keep you in the race, and hopefully allow you to kick into another gear to finish. Books are similar. You need to keep folks engaged from the start, however, you can’t give it all away too soon. And don’t get me started on the vast wasteland that is the middle of a book. How do you keep your reader engaged enough to finish? In the revision process, I noticed there were places where my character was kind of ruminating. Some of those moments could be cut down. As you’re farther away from the project you begin to see where you may have been filling some space and what parts were actually essential to your story. The right pace can also be genre-specific. Depending on what type of book you’re writing, you should study the pacing in other stories similar to yours.

Building suspense. What is happening in your story? And is it intriguing enough for your reader to want to know what happens? It doesn’t have to be a thriller for it to have suspense. Find dynamic ways to present obstacles to your main character’s goal and objective. This included arcs for secondary characters and building multiple obstacles for the protagonist to overcome. What else can happen that’s not the main point of your story?

Sentence structure. We don’t always pay attention to how we structure sentences. But we all have our own styles and our own crutches we lean on. Varying sentence structure is a huge factor in keeping a story interesting and giving your work rhythm. What was especially hard for me writing in the first person was avoiding sentences in succession that started with “I.”

Just, That, and Really. One of the first things my editor had to do was take a million “thats” out of my story. After all the self-editing I did, this made me sad to somehow have missed all those filler words. Do the best you can to eliminate them yourself. Save yourself the embarrassment I felt. LOL.

Unnecessary character names. Everyone in your story is not important enough to name. This was something my editor called out which I appreciated. It was a knee-jerk reaction for me to name everyone. But the store owner can be the store owner without a name. Maybe some description, but not necessary for them to be a person the reader assumes they should care about because you’ve named them. We also combined two secondary characters into one. Quite honestly, they were occupying a similar space, and I thought that to be a brilliant suggestion.

Ending Chapters. Have you ever read a book in a day because every cell in your body told you, “I have to know what happens next?” Well, that’s partially how the chapters have ended. Every ending doesn’t need to be a cliffhanger, but every ending of a chapter should move the story forward. Where you put those chapter breaks matter. Sometimes I asked my editor’s opinion on certain endings and if a chapter was too long. Always remember your editor is your teammate and it’s all about creating the best possible story.

These are literally a small assortment of things I’m learning and taking into my new work. There’s more, but buy my tea and a donut or something and I’d happily tell you more. Also, every story is not the same, so some of the minutiae in mine won’t apply to your wonderful work. Those that I’ve listed feel pretty universal.

Wishing you the best in your writing endeavors. Fiction is a fun world to get lost in, but many tools help separate successful books from others that fizzle into oblivion.

Writing/Job Opportunities

Verywell Mind is looking for freelancers with experience in evergreen content in the mental health space. writeforus@verywell.com with “Verywell Mind” in the subject line and relevant clips.

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