Novel writing is a time-consuming and demanding process. Not just anyone can sit down and produce a flexible and engaging story. There are many factors that go into the creation and development of a novel – from brainstorming ideas to the actual draft. In this post, we’ll talk about some tips to help you create a compelling novel from start to finish.

The average novel length today is between 41,000 and 50,000 words. The average book length today is between 41,000 and 50,000 words.  So what does it take to write a novel? This can be totally overwhelming; we’re talking about putting together a compelling, exciting story that’ll grip people and make them turn each page enthusiastically. Here’s the good news: like all kinds of writing, it’s a skill that can be learned and honed and studied and practiced and perfected. You won’t become Ernest Hemingway when you sit down to your computer, but you could become much better at your writing when practice and learn from your mistakes.

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Here’s some pointers when writing a novel…

● Read Plenty

The easiest way for you to write a novel is to read novels yourself. Through observation and reading you will learn what makes novels what they are. It is the same as talking to a friend. You can’t know about all of the ins and outs of a friend until you talk to them.

● Explore Your Niches:

Whether you are writing romance, horror or science fiction, it’s always good to explore and learn about the genre you book is based on. What kind of books are popular in your genre? Is your genre popular with readers? Is it oversaturated with a lot of competition?  Or is that genre dead? What kind of stories are popular in your genre? This is where reading books comes into play.  Look on popular platforms like Amazon to get a better idea of the types of stories people are reading.

● Map Out The Outline:

The journey from planning your first story to actually writing it is a unique and fun adventure. While creating an outline, I often reflect on how my outline may have helped me in the past. It is an effective tool and keeps my brain busy for the stretch of time between outlining a new piece of content and then writing it down. It is also a good creative space where I can reflect and gather ideas that can be easily accessible when needed. An outline will keep your ideas organized and concise. In other words, your outline is another physical link to your book.

● Map Out The Story

What’s your story about? The overall structure of the story is very important. How it pans out will determine if readers will be glued and want to keep turning the pages. Many writers use charts plotting out each event in the story. One important thing to note is never make the storyline too complicated. Many writers fall into this trap, making their plot complex, filling the story with too many plot twists that it puts readers off. Sometimes the best stories are the ones that are original like a love triangle where two guys love the same woman, a woman trying to mend a broken heart, a couple trying to settle their differences to make their marriage work and how their conflicts affect the people around them, etc.

● The Characters:

When you start writing a novel you need to get started making notes to create your characters. I would start by writing mini biographies about them, what they look like, their skills, attributes etc. Readers need to be able to connect with the characters you create. If you put little to no thought and create characters from the top of your mind, they will come across as wooden, cardboard cutouts that nobody would care about and that would kill your whole story off. Just remember your characters, the main one especially, the hero, needs to be fighting against something. There has to be a struggle they need to overcome,  a quest they need to go on, whether its to find something or themselves, a great evil they need to defeat. As the story progresses your characters will need to develop. They will need to go from ordinary, broken, to someone who is changed, stronger, wiser and more mature. This is essentially how readers will identify and care for the people in your story.

● The First Draft

Once you got your outline, your characters plotted out, the plot drafted, it will be time to write out your first draft. The first draft is building the basic foundations to your novel. You should avoid at all cost editing as you write. Editing and trying to make the first draft perfect is a sure fire way to kill inspiration and lose interest in the story you are writing. The first draft is not perfect. It will be full of grammar, typho errors and there will be a lot of areas where the dialogue and story will need tightening and altering. That will come in the second, third, fourth or however many drafts it takes. Good stories are never written, they are constantly rewritten.

● Set Daily Goals For Your Book

Writing a book is a discipline and you need to constantly stick at it to finish it. It is like running a marathon. You wouldn’t sprint in a marathon because you’d burn out for the first several miles. They say, the best way to finish a long race is to set a comfortable pace. And the same goes for writing a book. When you first plan the layout and outline of the book, you need to set yourself a goal of how many words you will write daily or how much of your manuscript you will edit.

● Proofreading

For a novel to be as interesting as possible we need to proofread them 100%. To make sure that the plot is logical and not out of scope, we need to make sure that there is no grammatical or spelling errors. After we read the first few chapters, we check for unusual words and elements of the plot. After all this, our process is almost finished. It is a boring process but a manuscript that is laden with grammatical, typho and spelling errors will put readers off and make you come across as unprofessional and lazy thus killing your story altogether even if you had a 100% cast iron plot. If you find it hard to proofread there are tools on the internet, most that are free that will help you with where punctuations, commas etc go and even search for those typhos and sentences and paragraphs that are out of place. You can hire someone as well to proofread your book on freelance sites like Fiverr if you got money to spare.

● Get People To Read Your Book

This is another important thing to do. As a writer you will be greatly invested in the book and story that most of the time, mistakes, plot holes in the story or changes that might be needed will be missed by the writer. Feedback is essential because other people will be able to give valuable constructive criticism, spotting mistakes that you may have  missed and offer their opinions on any element of the story. Family and friends are great for this or a social media platform like Wattpad where you can put your story up for display and get people to read it and get valuable feedback. Even better, Wattpad has a donation option where readers can donate money to a story they like giving the writer much needed funs to self publish their book.

● The Rise Of Self Publishing/Self Publishing vs Traditional Publishing ●

The rise of self publishing is causing a change in the way that people market themselves to others. Some publishers, for example Amazon, allows consumers to upload their work for publication within the publishers website. When consumers access this type of publishing platform they can upload their work and make money for themselves. However, not all publishers are happy with this trend. Amazon takes a percentage of people who sign up for their platform because they know the work they produce and publish is good enough for them. Another problem is when publishers themselves upload their own work to their online platform where they would lose any royalty payments for their work. Amazon decides that the best way to distribute their work is by selling the Amazon prime. Self publishing is faster than traditional publishing in that your work is published straight away, though there is a quite a bit of work you need to do with regards promoting and getting the word out. Some traditional publishers have strict requirements about what a story should be and there is a possibility your book could get rejected. Some traditional publishers require a writer to have a high number of followers on social media, their own website and even a YouTube channel before they consider investing in a writers book. While the advantages of traditional publishing means all the work is done for you, the publishing and promoting, it is hard, and often a long drawn out process especially if you decide to use an agent to do the publishing for you.

Writing a book can be a challenging and often laborious process. To see the whole process through to the end, you have to be passionate and inspired about the story. You have to be fully invested in the story and care enough about what your target audience thinks. Writing a book is like producing and directing your own movie and as with every movie that comes out, you never know whether it will be a hit or a flop. My husband worked on his first novel, Illusions? Maybe, day and night. He spent a whole fortune on self publishing services to get the book available at all online stores including Amazon and even paid extra for editing services to make it as professional as possible. But the book was not the runaway hit he hoped. If your first attempts don’t yield the kind of results you hoped, don’t get discouraged. Treat the whole thing as a learning experience. Not every book written will be a runaway success. JK Rowlings Harry Potter was rejected more than once when she submitted the book to publishers. The market for self publishing is now saturated. Amazon had removed all the barriers for publishing books making it easy for anyone to publish their works. To be successful, you would probably need to build an online presence so that you put yourself in front of your targeted audience. One of the best ways is to start a blog and write about a subject you are passionate about. Blogs are free to start and set up and there are tools online to help you write blog posts. The new spate of AI tools that write posts are now starting to sprout up everywhere though it will cost a subscription to use these services. Just be patient with the process believe in yourself and eventually you will get there.

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