How to Write a Novel

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Laura from YoungWritersWorkshops.com and I'm going to talk about how to write a novel. Think about, before you begin to write, think about how you can change your life so that you'll be able to make room to accomplish this task. And you'll probably need to change some things around in your life and reschedule some things or create an opening where you'll have time to write. Another part of this is thinking about some, basically, a timeline, some goals along the way that you'll want to achieve and this will help you stick to your schedule so that you'll have incremental progress towards your goal of finishing your novel. You'll start with the ending. Think about the story as a whole and how you'd like it to end. And a lot of people, a lot of novelist actually write the ending first and then, from there you can work backwards, plot out what it is that's going to happen along the way to lead to this ending. Think about the twists that will make your novel exciting and some of the character interactions that will help build the tension along the way. And think about sort of intermediate climaxes maybe that lead to the ultimate ending. Now, the more you can flesh out your characters before you begin to write, the more you really know them, the better your story will flow and the more readers will identify with the characters. In the end, you'll want to work with several readers who can give you feedback and really help you to see where the questions are going to come up in your story and what some of the things that you might need to rewrite and make more clear. So, those are some ideas about how to write a novel."