10 Tips to Write a Novel

For those who know what this means, you can skip this paragraph and the next. For the others, here’s a short reminder: imagine a review of the book “The Lord of the Rings” that would look like “Grade: 02/20 – Tolkien offers here an utterly ridiculous story blending creatures that simply cannot exist with a ring that can control its bearer… Total nonsense”. Or a review of Harry Potter such as: “Grade: 05/20 – No Miss Rowling, 11 years old children do not wave around a piece of wood to make things appear out of thin air!”. That would be ridiculous and the author of such reviews would be accused of not “diving” into the world proposed and to keep referring to the real world. In other words, that person would not have “suspended his/her disbelief”.

The willing suspension of disbelief thus designates the almost automatic mechanism (making the word “willing” debatable) that leads the audience to forget about the real world in order to dive into the fictional universe and embrace its rules. It’s thanks to this that we can live otherwise perfectly unrealistic stories with such intensity.

Now that we are on the same page, why does that matter? Because nothing kills the reader’s emotions and ruins the experience we try to offer more than inconsistencies in that field. For example if a character is a wizard who can control ice, why wouldn’t he use that power to save his friend from that house in flames? You’ll have to provide a good reason if you don’t want the reader to “leave” your universe (that is, remembering this is all a fiction and thus losing empathy for the characters, his or her involvement in the scenario, etc.) because it lost its credibility.

This can quickly become very complicated and difficult to manage. Let’s look at TV series created with a couple of episodes in mind: everything makes sense until the production team decides to add a season or two. There begins a festival of surprises, revelations and information on how the fictional world works, brought in with more or less skills depending on the scriptwriter and how the story developed up until that point, with the goal of making space for more episodes while still making sense.

In the case of a book, the difficulty comes from the fact you probably have in mind a couple of very clear scenes (characters involved, context, screenplay, emotions to bring up…) but spread over the entire story. And you’ll have to implement them in the world you created while adjusting them as little as possible to still provoke the result you intended.

In general when the time comes to add this scene, you realize it no longer makes sense: if a real person found him or herself in the situation described, he or she would for example find a solution that is simpler/less tragic/faster, etc. You must assume your readers will notice that, and they’ll want to know why things happen the way they do when there’s obviously a better solution.

Let’s continue with the wizard wielding ice from before: in your mind, you knew from the start he had this power, and also that his friend HAD to die in a fire (for your story to work). As long as these two elements are separated, everything is fine. But when the time comes to write the fire scene, problems arise: why in all heaven isn’t the hero using his magic?!

Thus you have to identify these inconsistencies as soon as possible so you don’t end up creating last minute explanations (which is a classic flaw of TV series/anime/manga and other lengthy works). You’ll also want to be constantly paying attention so you don’t let other inconsistencies creep in during the writing process.

In my case, this is certainly what proved the most difficult because I understood all this quite late. Without spoiling the story, I can for example mention the main character, Glaide, who had to go looking for the master of the Iretane (a school for sword-wielding) on his own; an element of the story I had in mind right from the start. But how could I justify him going alone like that? How could I explain that he absolutely had to meet this specific master and not another one, easier to find? And why is this guy so hard to find anyway? And because I couldn’t change that part of the tale without modifying the whole atmosphere and the stakes, I had to adjust other parts to make the whole thing consistent.

So first, try to identify as soon as possible potential inconsistencies that could draw you reader out of your universe and correct them (erase/change the scene, add explanations to justify the events unfolding…). Second, try to read what you’re writing with some distance; “considering what we’ve learned so far (rules of the fictional world, personality of the characters…), do what I write make sense?” And finally, read through the whole story one final time, focusing solely on how logical all its parts are.