A Treatise On
Writing Novels
Neurosurgeon
Turned Author Writes With Gripping Realism
I tried to write poetry. With supreme effort, I could
occasionally come up with two lines that made sense and rhymed. For the life of
me, I was never able to get to the second two lines; so, I gave up and simply
chose to be an aficionado, admiring poetry as an ardent arms-length spectator.
Next, I experimented with short story writing; but, by
nature, I am too verbose. I needed a longer, broader canvas to paint my word
pictures.
I settled for, worked at, and experimented with novels.
In twenty-five or so years, I have learned some things I would like to share.
The greatest things about novel writing are: the author can tell the whole
story; he or she can—and must—be the god of the story, the only one who knows
the past, the present, the alpha and the omega. The omnipotent author gets to
make all the decisions, to get all the glory, to deflect all the criticism, and—in
the end—to absorb the ignominy of failure. It’s worth it to be able to be the
god of the book, to get the story out—even if only for a brief time.
Structure of a novel: There are obviously a great many
variations on structure; but, in my opinion, all novels need a definable
beginning, mid-section, and an ending. I admit to hating flashbacks. Here are a
few suggestions related to that obvious structural need:
Prologues and
Epilogues
It is not necessary to have either or both a prologue
or an epilogue, and it might inadvertently result in the creation of a spoiler.
However, I like them because it gives the author and the reader a mysterious
glimpse of what might be and something to look for within—maybe a
foreshadowing, or maybe just a trick. A prologue may be short or long, pithy or
gritty, eloquent or Hemingwayesque. It should be enlightening of the story,
usually containing or promising an element of surprise, and something for the
reader to discover within the novel-in-chief—an “ah-ha” moment.
I wrote a prologue that was two pages long for The Sheep
Dog and the Wolf which seemed to be entirely incongruous for the
first third of the book. Then, I slipped the prologue content in; so, my
readers could suffer something of a shock, at least a decided change of
direction. In my latest book, The Rise and Fall of the Fifteenth Caliphate,
I have a series of prologues—almost short stories—that illuminate the theme of
the book-in-chief.
Epigrams
Epigrams can start a book, finish a book, or do the
same thing for a chapter. They should provide an insight into the ongoing
story, a link to the past, or a foreshadowing of the near future in the book.
In my opinion, a clever epigraphic entry that is there for the sake of cuteness
or some feeling on the part of the author that is not truly concerned with the
story, usually falls short or is confusing, or just seems cute and out of
place. The internet is a great source; be mindful of copyright privileges; and
make your choice be pertinent. In a novel, author asides may indicate
amateurism and seem to be a failed attempt at cleverness. Be careful about
injecting an “in-the-margin” and “off-the-cuff” comment that is set apart from
the flow of the story. That type of insert suggests that the author is not
truly the god of the book, but is just another onlooker, and one who needs to
get his or her two-bits in from the peanut gallery.
First Sentence;
First Paragraph; First Page
This
is the age of the millennials—a digital age when there is no patience for a
less than stellar beginning or a slow buildup. The author or TV playwright gets
ten seconds of sight and sound, or, at the most, a page of narrative before the
readers’ eyes glaze over; and they seek a quicker fix.
The first sentence is likely the most important set of
words strung together in the whole book. I remember the first sentence in
Stephen Becker’s, The Chinese Bandit: “That summer they hanged a fat man
at the Western gate as a warning and example to all.” Now, how can anyone not
want to explore further? Then, there is the classic of Edgar Allen Poe’s, The Fall of
the House of Usher, which is—if nothing else perhaps the record
holder for the length of a single sentence: “During the whole of a dull, dark,
and soundless day in the Autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively
low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a
singularly dreary tract of country, and at length found myself, as the shades
of evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher.” That
memorable two-breath sentence certainly sets the mood and—as a matter of
desire—for pursuing a guilty little pleasure into the delicious darkness of
Poe’s mind.
Make the first sentence a bugle call, or at least get
the excitement going in that call, in that crucial first paragraph that
follows. Fail in that and only a few devoted fans will give you the opportunity
to share more than that one page. If the start is lifeless, the book will sink.
I remember being required to read, The Tale of
Two Cities, by Charles Dickens when I was in high school. He wrote
chapters as episodes for a weekly serial for Chapman and Hart, Publishers. In
my adolescence—and still as an adult—I found the first 100 pages to be deadly
dull, little more than turgid descriptions with no evident progress towards a
captivating story. Thereafter, apparently, Dickens discovered his story and
then raced forward in what was to become on the all-time best novels, and
descriptions of the infamous Reign of Terror.
You are going to have to have an extremely loyal set of
followers who will wait you out for a 100 pages. Lots of luck there.
Body of the Book
You, the author—and the god of the book—owe it to your
congregation of readers to craft a good and compelling story. In my humble
opinion, that is the foremost requirement of a good book. Many of the hundreds
of thousands of efforts by authors never seem to get that. Those writers seem
to be ignorant of Poe’s rules of story telling or of Hemingway’s example.
Simply put, your story must have a plausible beginning, body, and conclusion
that follow one to another in a logical “evidence-based” progression. It does
not matter whether you write historical fiction, action or legal thrillers,
suspense stories, horror, fantasy, science fiction, or even children’s books
(think of Where
the Wild Things Are, by Maurice Sendak), the rules still applies:
the story is the thing. If you fail to get across your story, you will be
doomed to be a lesser god, even a false one with more critics than fans; and
your book will join the thousands of others that never get read.
The End
In television shows, an hour program has roughly
thirty-eight minutes to tell the story in between the frequent opportunities to
enjoy presentations of product and services research. Therefore, DNA results
are immediate, complicated detective investigations last bare minutes,
discovery of evidence borders on the miraculous with geniuses and totally
cooperative ancillary services working together towards the desired end. Cops
arrive at the locations of criminals with the speed of light, taking mere
seconds to cross New York City, the United States, or even the world. TV
requires a prodigious degree of suspension of judgment.
On the contrary, avid novel readers expect a great deal
more from their authors. People who can read require, and expect, more detail,
apt description, and logical progression of dialogue and events—in short,
plausibility. Even in mysteries, it would be laughable in a novel for the
characters to demonstrate the every day genius lightening quick conclusions
coming from out of nowhere that they get on TV. In novels, travel is at a pace
less than the speed of light (with the exception of Sci-fy, perhaps), and may
be arduous or fun, but—at least—they are not yet interrupted by advertisements
for toilet paper and tooth paste.
The god-like author must set the scenes and ensure that
the reader is an involved onlooker, who is privy to what is transpiring with
better intel than the characters acting out the story, but is never as good as
that information that the all-knowing author possesses and is willing to
transmit only grudgingly and over time. Description is necessary to make the
characters come alive and to make a scene of action so clear that the reader
feels as well as knows the story. On the other hand, excessive and irrelevant
description is not useful for the story, except for the creation of what is
meant to be “poetic prose.” Some poetic prose serves as no more than fodder for
page flipping.
Above all, the scenes, the dialogue, the action, and
the descriptions serve the end, the conclusion of the story in novel form. The
conclusion should make sense—at least in retrospect—even in a mystery that
concludes in the last sentence with an unexpected shocker. Unexpected is not
the same as illogical or impossible. Surprises are fine so long as they are in
accordance with the preceding evidence that constitutes the body of the story.
Be as careful about the ending of your book as you are about your first
sentence and paragraph. Never let it be said that “he (or she) seemed to be
desperate to end the thing.”
Avoid being so weary with writing that you race to a
finish, any finish, just to make it be done, and off to the publisher. You can
kill off a beloved character, even the main character, but in so doing make it
a measure of not totally unexpected and implausible tragedy or a way out of
your writer’s block quagmire. You have truly failed if your faithful reader—who
has gone all the way with you—reads the last paragraph or line with a sneer or
a shrug and an exasperated exhalation, “saay whaa?”
Character
Development
No character should be a flat, never varying
goody-two-shoes or a villain so evil as to be devoid of rational thinking or
some inkling of goodness somewhere in his or her makeup. If the genre of the
book is about mindless crazies, zombies, and the like, then maybe there is an
exception to be accepted. The only characters who need to think and to vocalize
their thoughts are the main protagonists and antagonists. They are also the
only ones who require full and
continuing physical descriptions. Most other characters—those lesser
beings—deserve only cursory and usually one-time descriptions and are seldom
privileged by the god to speak and almost never to think.
Protagonists can make mistakes, have moral lapses, and
cause harm. Antagonists can actually be good—at least at times—but they must be
present to permit tension and opposition. Both character types need to become
people we get to know and either like or dislike, but to be allowed a measure
of tolerance and at least grudgingly an acknowledgment of their mind set.
As an example, my new book, The Rise and Fall of the
Fifteenth Caliphate, is historical fiction which strongly features
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, whose deeds are as reprehensible as humans get. However,
in his religious beliefs, he fights for the preservation of his religion
against usurpers, Christian crusaders, atheists, polytheists, kuffars, and
people who simply and wickedly do not believe in God or the way God behaves in
the same way al-Baghdadi does. It follows that all those misguided and wicked
people—whom we may see as protagonists—need to be put down for the good of his
cause. His way of thinking is logical and correct to him and his followers,
however vile and perverted that mind set is to the regular Muslims and the vast
majority of other people, particularly his victims. Through his prism,
outsiders are all enemies, to the point of being the devil’s own minions. That
said, you—as my reader—are likely to recognize a good many protagonists who are
people a lot like us.
The gist of this presentation about important
characters is that they need to be made believable. In that vein, be careful of
dialogue. Make the speaking parts move along in keeping with the personalities
of the protagonist and the antagonist, and with the end game as divined by the
author—the god of the novel. Keep it all plausible and logical whatever your
genre may be.
Dialogue
Be mindful of the impact of your characters’ dialogue.
What charms the kitten loving Sunday School teacher may make the Sam Spade fan
grit his or her teeth. The obverse side of that coin is the clinical gore of
Kay Scarpetta and the harsh underworld slanguage of her colleagues and the
denizens of the dark with whom she deals on a regular basis may turn the
stomach of the Church Lady and quickly drive her and her confreres to more
comfortable reading material. Mind your characters’ dialogue and to whom you
are writing. Be consistent with your genre, at least in each book. Change
genres if you want, but do not have offensive surprises for the Church Lady.
Figure out if you are writing for tough old cops and retired marines, or is a
more general readership what you have in mind? There is a readership for James
Lee Burke’s character, Dave Robideaux and his tough scatological, profane, and
irreverent patter just like there is for Kay Scarpetta’s vivid description of
gore. Burke and Cornwall are masters of their crafts, and they know their audiences.
I know both sets of jargon based on a life among hard
men, but I have chosen to moderate the language of my characters, to avoid
frank sexual descriptions, and to leave room for the adventurous Church Lady to
find something she can like in my “gritty realism” as my publicist says about
me.
More dialogue and less “telling” is a good rule of
thumb but one that is not so easy to master. Telling is a much easier and
quicker way to move a story along efficiently, but it makes for less of a
story. Study and research well if you intend to be brave and include language,
dialects, regional jargon and intend to include foreigners whom you allow to
speak in their language. Be especially careful with stereotypes such as ghetto
talk. It may be convincing if done right and keeps up with the ever-evolving
times, or it may be plain insulting. I suggest that if it is your aspiration to
set a book in a region with conspicuously distinct dialects and accents that
you either be from that locale and can speak like a native or consider studying
the works of masters like Walter Mosely—e.g. The Devil in a Blue Dress, Mark
Twain’s Huckleberry
Finn, Joel Chandler Harris’s, Uncle Remus, or the legendary
Robert Burns. If you want to write in a Yorkshire brogue, you had better live
there for a couple of years. Even then, you will probably have to resort to
plagiarism. Of course, you can invent your own language, place, and people,
names like J. K. Rowley, if your bent is Sci-fi or fantasy. That takes great
creativity and is more than I can muster.
Usually, dialect speech should be sparing. Throw in a
few words or phrases to indicate that the speakers are using that mode of
speech or that foreign language. Long stretches of such speech become a
stumbling block and slow the progress of the story—which is more important than
the dialogue, in my opinion—and dulls the enthusiasm of the reader. That is
certainly one of the most important reasons for writing a book in the first
place—to win that enthusiasm.
You are encouraged to comment on this opinionated
treatise—unless you intend to be critical, and therefore mean, by
definition—and you might have an opinion of value. It is possible that I could
even learn something.
