How To Write a Novel

by Robison Wells
(If you'll recall, I'm in grad school. The following is the actual text of a paper that I turned in this week for a business communications class. Trust me, it follows the requirements...) (It's also long, so sorry about that.)

How to Write a Novel

Everyone wants to write the Great American Novel. Everyone says that one of these days they’re going to sit down, look the computer in the eye, and churn out the next Huckleberry Finn. And every year, these aspiring writers spend millions of dollars trying to do just that: going to conferences, buying how-to books, and listening to motivational speakers.

Unfortunately, one of the most common sentiments I hear from these novice writers is that they’re having a terrible time writing. It’s not unusual for a first-time author to spend years on their book—some even take decades to write and rewrite, refining every sentence, word, and punctuation mark.

Is it as hard as they say? Is there an easy, sure-fire formula to writing a novel? Of course there is. (If Dan Brown can sell sixty million books, so can you!) It’s simply a matter of setting, plot, characters, and theme. Fill in the blanks and—move over Hemingway!—you have yourself a masterpiece.

Setting

Setting is the most basic element of a book. The setting is where and when your story happens—it’s the Dust Bowl era of Oklahoma, or the Death Star a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. But more than time and place, setting also includes the little details: what would Hogwarts be without Every Flavor Beans, or Oz without flying monkeys? When choosing a setting, you have one of two options, and your decision here will determine much of the course of your novel. You can have either a boring setting, or an exciting one.

A Boring Setting
A boring setting is perfectly acceptable in novel writing. While the word “boring” might be considered pejorative, there are certain books that actually require boring settings. I’m speaking specifically of literary novels. These are books wherein kids die of wasting diseases, and they’re books that win national awards.

The absence of anything interesting in the setting is done purposefully; the general atmosphere of these books screams of despondence and depression, and such things simply can’t exist in an interesting setting. Imagine Summer of the Swans taking place in Narnia, or Angela’s Ashes including a chase scene on top of Mt. Rushmore. If something like that happened, readers might actually want to read these books, and then where would we be?

An Exciting Setting
An exciting setting is appreciated by virtually all readers. According to a fictional study which I just made up, 94% of readers prefer exciting settings. When asked if they would replace Ethan Frome’s setting (winter in Starkfield, MA) with something more exciting, such as a space station or the top of a speeding train, 85% responded positively. And a staggering 96% said that they’d prefer the sled be switched out with either a hovercraft or a Taun Taun.

This sentiment was illustrated clearly in an interview with Brianna Johnson, a high school junior who is currently reading Toni Morrison’s award winning Beloved: “Like, I get all the stuff about slavery and stuff, but, like, Denver? Who cares about Denver? Seriously. I mean, like, I’ve been to Denver and it’s not all that special. Why not Cabo San Lucas? And why not have Sethe be all like in your face? She’d be all, ‘Emancipate this, jerk!’”

Plot

Plot is the next step for your novel, after you choose a setting. Basically, the plot is the action—it’s what happens in your story. Plot is Frodo throwing the One Ring into Mount Doom, or Ralphie Parker shooting his eye out, or whatever it was that Henry David Thoreau did at that pond. There are two ways to plot a book: you can outline, or you can make it up as you go.

Outlining
Outlining is used by some of the best authors. One of the chief reasons for outlining is if you’re writing a book that is clue-heavy, such as a mystery or a suspense novel. Since you want to feed your reader a little information at a time—information which will, at the end of the book, lead you to an epiphanous conclusion—then you kind of ought to know where your story is going. If you outline, then you can decide: “In Chapter Four I’ll mention Lady Prudence’s fear of snakes; in Chapter Eight I’ll disclose the location of the elusive French Fugitive; in Chapter Fourteen Professor McDonald will find the bloodied penknife behind the tool shed.” (If you didn’t outline this kind of thing, then when you reveal that it was actually Judge Hughes who killed the nanny, your reader would be all like “What?!”)

Making It Up As You Go
Making it up as you go is a fine method if you want to write a meandering, amorphous book with very little structure. It’d be difficult to foreshadow anything, because you wouldn’t have any idea what you were foreshadowing when you wrote it. But, then again, foreshadowing is an advanced technique and probably doesn’t jive well with modern readers. A recent study done by an elderly author states “Kids these days wouldn’t know good writing if it bit ‘em on the butt. Now get off my lawn!”

Characters

Characters are vital to a story. They’re what gives the book meaning and humanity (except for character who are, like, robots). It’s not the futuristic technology and rat cages that make 1984 resonate with readers, but the thoughts and feelings of the main character as he yearns for freedom. It’s not the car chases and tornadoes that cause Les Miserables to speak to our souls, but the soul-searching and inner turmoils of Sherlock Holmes. The three simplest ways to come up with characters are to base them on people you know, make them up from scratch, or plagiarize characters from other books.

Base Characters on People You Know
Basing characters on people you know is a quick, easy trick for inexperienced writers. We all know that Mark Twain’s nephew was named Tom Sawyer, and that Twain used to pay him to paint his fence. It’s less well known that Robert Louis Stevenson had a podiatrist named Howard Jekyll, and his butler was Louie Hyde. When you base characters on people that you already know, the hard part is done. Harper Lee didn’t have to completely fictionalize Boo Radley—-she just had to think of the weird guy who lived next door and her book practically wrote itself.

Make Characters Up From Scratch
Making characters up from scratch is where an author really earns his or her pay—-when you’re stuck having to come up with something completely original. There are two schools of thought here: you can either draw random attributes from a hat, coming up with someone, for example, who is a civil engineer with blonde hair who loves cats and listens to Led Zeppelin. The other option is to register your characters with fake email addresses in Facebook: you’d follow their simple registration forms and discover that your protagonist is a female libertarian seeking friendship. As simple as 1-2-3.

Plagiarize Characters from Other Books
Plagiarizing from other books is the easiest and fastest method to character development. Consider this: Thomas Langdon and Siddhartha really aren’t all that different. They’re both Harvard symbologists, they’re both claustrophobic, and they both become the Buddha. It’s obvious once you think about it.

Theme

Theme is what really makes a book shine, and it’s not that hard to master if you know what you’re doing. A novel’s theme permeates the book—it’s the message, or moral that you come away with at the end. Put simply, if your reader cries, it’s because of theme. Much like there are only seven basic stories in the entire world, there really are only two themes: first, it’s nice to be important, but it’s more important to be nice; second, be yourself. That's it; those are the only two themes.

It’s Nice to Be Important, But It’s More Important To Be Nice
The idea of “It’s Nice to Be Important, But It’s More Important To Be Nice” is that your character has the opportunity to have all life’s luxuries—maybe they’ve gone from small town America and are suddenly a rock star—but then they give it all up because they don’t like the corrupting power of stardom. Examples: Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Machiavelli’s The Prince.

Be Yourself
Being yourself is the perfect catch-all theme. Your character learns that he/she doesn’t need to conform to The Man’s ideas of fashion and fun. If this novel were a movie, it would star Amanda Bynes. Examples: More’s Utopia, Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.

Go and Do Thou Likewise

All you have to do to write a novel is figure out setting, plot, characters, and theme. All the essentials are laid out above, and you must simply follow the quick, easy formula to produce a book worthy of critical praise and national acclaim. Harry Potter will be shaking in his wizardy shoes when he sees you coming. Why, you could be the next me!