Re: Hey guys! I needed some advice on novel making...
Posted: April 2nd, 2012, 1:50 am
Our friend, Sylvia may help:
I lay on the couch on the breezeway and shut my eyes. I could hear my mother clearing the typewriter and the papers from the card table and laying out the silver for supper, but I didn't move.
Inertize oozed like molasses through Elaine's limbs. That's what it must feel like to have malaria, she thought.
At any rate, I'd be lucky if I wrote a page a day.
Then I knew what the trouble was.
I needed experience
How could I write about life when I'd never had a love affair or a baby or even seen anybody die? A girl I knew had just won a prize for a short story about her adventures among the pygmies in Africa. How could I compete with that sort of thing?
--
I take you're still 17 years old (unless you just had your birthday a month ago, then Happy Birthday). If you want to write something astounding, and not something mediocre like the overrate Jhumpa Lahiri, then you must continue experiencing a lot more in life in order to fill the pages of a story. If you want to introduce a significant character that is of the opposite sex, then you must wear the skin, pick the brain, and feel the soul of the opposite sex. Know why he thinks this way, why he made such decision, etc. If you need a scene of a car crash, you must know the mechanics of a car, how a car crash happens, what happens next-- know the process of saving a life inside a hospital, how the doctors and nurses act. If there's a scene about a vacation, you must experience that vacation and learn reflection before writing in print. Other wise whatever you write will be boring and will be all "telling" and not "showing" if you know what I mean. But it really depends on how you want your writings to turn out. Take a look at Cormac McCarthy, his writings are empty but they get recognition.
Suggestion: Write a short novel with a plot you're very much familiar with. Write an autobiography changing a few scenes/events/characters etc. Add your creativity in it. People will read.
I lay on the couch on the breezeway and shut my eyes. I could hear my mother clearing the typewriter and the papers from the card table and laying out the silver for supper, but I didn't move.
Inertize oozed like molasses through Elaine's limbs. That's what it must feel like to have malaria, she thought.
At any rate, I'd be lucky if I wrote a page a day.
Then I knew what the trouble was.
I needed experience
How could I write about life when I'd never had a love affair or a baby or even seen anybody die? A girl I knew had just won a prize for a short story about her adventures among the pygmies in Africa. How could I compete with that sort of thing?
--
I take you're still 17 years old (unless you just had your birthday a month ago, then Happy Birthday). If you want to write something astounding, and not something mediocre like the overrate Jhumpa Lahiri, then you must continue experiencing a lot more in life in order to fill the pages of a story. If you want to introduce a significant character that is of the opposite sex, then you must wear the skin, pick the brain, and feel the soul of the opposite sex. Know why he thinks this way, why he made such decision, etc. If you need a scene of a car crash, you must know the mechanics of a car, how a car crash happens, what happens next-- know the process of saving a life inside a hospital, how the doctors and nurses act. If there's a scene about a vacation, you must experience that vacation and learn reflection before writing in print. Other wise whatever you write will be boring and will be all "telling" and not "showing" if you know what I mean. But it really depends on how you want your writings to turn out. Take a look at Cormac McCarthy, his writings are empty but they get recognition.
Suggestion: Write a short novel with a plot you're very much familiar with. Write an autobiography changing a few scenes/events/characters etc. Add your creativity in it. People will read.