Beyond the Novel Writing Process

First the bad news: following the Novel Writing Process is only one of the tasks you must complete to write a novel. In all, there are three of them:

• The first of these is doing the actual planning and writing and revising, and the way you accomplish that is by following the 9-step Novel Writing Process.

• The second task is to learn your craft, or the "rules" of how to create characters, how to write a plot and so forth - and that is why the 9 steps are backed up by in-depth sections explaining all these rules.

• Finally, you need to learn how to write novels by reading them, particularly recently-published novels from your chosen category of fiction. This will help you to learn both the art and the craft of how to write a novel.

If it feels like I have just tripled your workload, don't look at it that way. The good news, you see, is that these three tasks - doing some writing of your own, learning the theory, and reading what other writers have done - feed off each other, creating a virtuous circle of improvement.

In other words, the best way to tackle the three separate jobs is in unison...

Don't feel like you have to nail the theory of novel writing before you are ready to analyze published novels for literary technique.

Don't feel like you need an encyclopaedic knowledge of published novels before you are ready to write some prose of your own.

Just jump right in!

Learning the theory of how to write novels can be heavy-going all by itself, but practising the things you learn in your own planning and writing, and seeing how other writers do it through reading, will bring the novel writing rules to life.

In practical terms, then, you simply need to create space in your working week for all three tasks:

1. Planning and writing your own novel by working your way through the 9 steps of the Novel Writing Process

2. Studying the articles on the website to learn precisely how to construct characters, how to give a novel a theme, and so on.

3. Reading novels from your chosen genre to see how it all works in practice.

Oh, and I'll add a fourth one: not forgetting to enjoy yourself along the way!