A Top Tip for Writing a First Novel

Writing a first novel is exciting, thrilling and probably the biggest creative challenge you will ever face. You have most likely been thinking about writing a novel for years...

Ideas have been building up inside you all that time - consciously or subconsciously - and all of a sudden you have the opportunity to set them free in a work of fiction. There are few better feelings than that in life!

Now, the temptation when writing a first novel is to let all these writing ideas come flooding out and somehow find a place for them in your novel, but it is something you must resist, at least if you want your first novel to be successful.

I see it all the time when folks just starting out in novel writing run their ideas past me...

• They want to write a coming-of-age-novel about the effects divorce has on a child (because as a child they went through this experience themselves).



• The novel is also about how people with mental disabilities are treated by society (because they have been on the receiving end of some prejudice in their time).



• Oh, and they've got plenty to say about the power of friendship, too, so they are going to try to work that in somewhere.



• The novel is basically a drama, but they've always loved crime fiction so they are going to work in a murder as a sub-plot.



• And although the novel will mainly be set in their hometown of Sydney, they also want to try to include a section set in the Brazilian rainforest.

Yes, I'm exaggerating - but not by much. The temptation to do something like this when writing fiction really can be overwhelming when, for the first time in your life, you are faced with a blank canvas. But you must resist it.

A coming-of-age story about the effects a divorce has on a child sounds like a great starting point for a novel. Also making it about mental disability might work, particularly if the disability was triggered or worsened by the divorce. But throw in the friendship theme on top, as well as the murder and the section set in the rainforest, and it starts to sound like not one novel but several.

If you try to pour everything you have into your first novel, you will have two problems:

1. The book will be a mess and very probably unpublishable.
2. Even if you do achieve the near-impossible and find a publisher, you will have nothing left to say in your second novel.

Like I said, writing a first novel is an exciting time, but you must be restrained. If ideas come to you which have no place in the book you are currently working on, get them down on paper but then file them away for later. Take it one novel, and one idea, at a time.