Creative Writing

CHAPTER16

The Longer Story: The Novel

In This Chapter

• Perfecting novel story and plot
• Writing the scene and summary
• Using backstory and flashback in longer stories
• Working with prosody

Writing a novel seems like a big undertaking, and it is. But there are some things you can consider to help demystify it a bit. Like all books, at the most basic level, writing a novel involves just three steps:

1. Planning—this is where you work out what you want to say (in note form).
2. Writing—here, you transform the plan into prose and dialogue.
3. Revising—finally, you polish the words until they shine.

If you’re serious about succeeding as a novel writer, you ...