Writing My First Novel: Finding and Exploring Ideas
By
Maria V. Eyles
(a.k.a Maria Christina
Vidale)
“I want to
write a novel someday” is a dream for many of us. I finally fulfilled my dream
and have published my first novel, God’s
Beautiful Dream by Maria Christina Vidale. (See article below for more about my novel.)
It sounds
easy, but how do you start? Where do you get your ideas? Or maybe you have too
many novel ideas and can’t narrow them down.
Starting
your novel raises your chances of finishing your novel. You can’t finish what you
never started.
Here are a
few techniques to get your creative flow primed for starting. They really
helped me, and continue to help me stay creatively healthy.
The Nugget. Search your mind and writings for a
nugget that fascinates you. I started my novel, God’s Beautiful Dream, based on a description of a young woman
standing in the sunset in Paris, soaking in the rays, while someone watched
from a balcony above.
Years later
I came across this scene and it intrigued me. Who was that young woman? Who was
watching her? A man, of course, who wondered what was happening to her. The
idea evolved from there. The woman was on the verge of having mystical
experiences (unbeknownst to her) and the man became a young priest struggling
with his faith. There was a built-in story, with tension and possibly
conflicting goals.
As Luke and
Maya’s story evolved, it became too big for the short story I had intended it
to be—and the novel evolved naturally on its own.
Start with a character who intrigues
you. Maya spoke
little, yet she stood there in the sunset hugging a story. But Father Luke was
different. He talked to me quite frequently. Luke was the voice of my own
spiritual conflicts. At the same time, he had his own struggles apart from
mine. In the process of writing, we tried to work on them together.
Splice together different eras of
your life. Experiment
with your own story. What would have happened differently if you knew Person Q
during Era 3? What if Person A had ever (or never) met Person Q? What if you had made a different career
choice? What if a major incident in your life turned out much differently? Take
people and/or incidents from the distant past and put them together with others
from the recent past. Ask “what if?” As with all fiction, make sure you create
original characters and story lines based on a variety of people and contexts so
that they are not identifiable as real people. Nor is it a good idea to write a
novel straight out of your own life without doing a lot of disguising and
reworking of the story. Remember, this is called fiction for a reason.
Once you
have your best idea, it’s time to explore it. For this, I find freewriting the most useful. For me, great
ideas come out in freewriting more easily than they do while trying to
painfully outline a story.
Peter Elbow
developed this method. Take an empty pad and a pen. Write a key word on the
paper, or start with a sentence about how you are feeling (“I’m feeling blocked right now.”) Time
yourself for five minutes. Then put the pen on the paper and write anything as
fast as you can. You may repeat your key word or your sentence dozens of times
if you want to, but keep your hand moving and the pen on the paper for five
minutes. Don’t stop or go backwards and don’t erase; simply keep repeating your
last word until something else shows up. If you feel like you’re going to stop,
just keep rewriting the last word you wrote until something else comes along.
At the end of five minutes, your hand should be sore, your paper should be
messy, but your mind should feel clearer.
If your
freewriting produces only one good idea, it hasn’t been a waste of time. It if
produces nothing fruitful, it has started to unblock your mind or to clear out
emotional clutter. Either way, you can’t lose.
This method
is good for unblocking and for exploring. The pen moves fast so that your brain
can unleash what it wants to say without your logical mind blocking or editing
it. When you are done, read it. Then try to find at least one word, sentence or
section you can explore again, either by freewriting or by normal methods. If
not, throw the paper away and start anew.
The beauty
of freewriting is that you are writing
without judging or censoring. “Just writing” is a good habit to get into.
Once you
have one or more energetic ideas for your novel, you are on your way. The next
step varies by person. You can just start writing or you can make an outline of
your story or you can write out scenes. We can talk more about these steps in
an upcoming article.