Wednesday 22 October 2014

How to write a Novel - Secret Tips

In this short essay, I give you some tips on just how to write a short novel. If you have never attempted to write a book before, please don't feel that it will be too much for you to cope with. At first, this is exactly how I felt but there is a secret to writing and it's not as difficult as you might have been led to believe.

I have written two books now, one an autobiography and the other a short novel. The hardest was the autobiography for sure but this was only because I had to do a lot of research for it. Writing your autobiography is in some ways easier than writing a novel since it is about your life and you can't change that. You just start at the beginning and go through your life although you will not be able to remember everything, you will remember the most vivid parts of your life and all those interesting stories that accompanied them.

With an autobiography, the whole plot is there already and all you have to do is write it all down. The computer can be really helpful here and if you set it correctly, it will in most part be able to correct your spelling as you go along. After you have finished the book, you can go through it and correct all the grammar to a good standard too by using the program set in the computer. This has been a great asset in my writing.

Break your writing up into chapters by choosing different points in your life such as how you did in school, your first job your marriage etc.

Writing a novel is going to be a little different but all you need is perhaps an event in your own life that has some potential. This could be anything like an interesting experience such as in your job or travel or tragedy. My novel came about by using an experience with my first love, a girl I knew a long time ago and how I messed it up because I was so clumsy and naive. I always wished I could go back and change what I had done and so was born my novel about time travel called "Inside the Clock" published on Amazon. You can view the first few chapters of this for free if you click on the link. This will give you some idea of what I mean.  Again it was not too difficult to write because it was based on true life events which I could remember well so the basic framework was there in the first place. So it was a true story but sprinkled with a little fiction.

As for the characters within your book, these can also be real so you already know them and will be more confident about writing about them. Of course you should change their names but as a consequence of being real people, your writing will convey more conviction and honesty. The locations within your book can also be real but can retain their real names such as in my own novel "Inside the Clock" and by clicking on the link you will get some idea of how I wrote it.

So if you've been planning to write a book but never got around to it, then these simple idea's might just give you the confidence to get started with it. You don't need a publisher either as you can publish your finished book for free on Amazon Kindle Store which is an amazing thing to be able to do. You never know, you might just surprise yourself and everyone else as well."Inside the Clock"