So, You Wanna Write a Novel

By Carl Lakeland

Quality fiction writing stems from a solid understanding of what works, and what doesn't.

Carl Lakeland, Author of the multi award winning Eagle Shield, Project Amber and The Lost Ones, in the MILESTONE series brings you his spin and style on the concept of writing to thrill.

 

"I'll take you on a journey from the conceptual stages or your creative imagination, right through to helping you become traditionally published or self-published. We'll explore all the options. We'll leave nothing out and we'll expose the rules, when to bend them a little, and even when it might be the right time to break them for creative effect.

"If writing a novel is your goal, why not ramp things up with a killer thriller?"

• Language: English
• Publisher: Carl Lakeland
• Release date: Jun 15, 2024
• ISBN: 9781763616318

Carl Lakeland

Carl Lakeland lives with his wife in the sleepy town of Snake Valley, 36 kilometers southwest of Ballarat in Australia. Lakeland grew up during the early seventies western suburbs of Sydney. Having enlisted into the military at the age of seventeen, he draws on his experience to create powerful and engaging speculative fiction. “Sometimes, I can’t let things be,” says Lakeland. “I write stories with a passion that others might see as being obsessive. I live and breathe it. I dream it when I sleep. But I never write down my dreams. If I can’t remember those things I’ve dreamt, they’re not important enough.” Carl Lakeland’s stories revolve around the element of ‘what if?’ He pushes the boundaries of his stories to the edge of the Official Secrets Act, which will have the reader wondering about the aspect of creative license, or the possibility of fact in his writing. Either way, the reader will be left to make up their own mind. His books are fast paced, edge of your seat thrillers which are distinctively written in a way that will have the reader guessing which way the story is about to head. “As a writer, unpredictability is the key essence. If I write something that can be foreseen in coming chapters, it’s not good enough. I will scrap it. My goal is to keep the reader wondering, even sometimes to the detriment of my good guys!”

Book preview

Table of Contents

So, You Wanna Write a Novel

Also By Carl Lakeland

SO, YOU WANNA

WRITE A

NOVEL

AND NOT

ONLY THAT, A

Thriller?

Carl Lakeland

Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.

–Benjamin Franklin

You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

–Ray Bradbury, Zen in the Art of Writing

First published in Australia by Southern Cross Creativity 2024

Copyright © Carl Lakeland 2024 Southern Cross Creativity 2024

email: [e-mail]

Web: carllakeland.com

Typesetting: Carl Lakeland

Cover design: Simon Critchell, Carl Lakeland, damonza.com

The right of Carl Lakeland to be identified as Author of the Work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

ISBN number: 9781763616318 (eBook) 9781763616301 (paperback)

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

Contents

Introduction

First, Let’s Set It Up

‘The Emotional Shape of a Story’

Got Any Ideas?

Point of View

The way you write your story through your main character’s eyes.

The Hook, and the Setup

Show-Don’t-Tell

And What about Beta Readers?

The Conflict

Three Act Structure

The Character of Characters

Thirty Odd Sheets of Paper

Rhythm and Style

The Climax and Resolution

What Next?

The Real Work Begins

The Good Times are Just Beginning

About the author.

Introduction

‘One day, I’m gonna write a book.’

It’s on the ‘to-do’ list for so many individuals, but unfortunately, in most cases, that potential next best seller ends up going nowhere. Imagine the millions, maybe even billions of lists that are out there; stuck on the sides of fridges, placed in green marker on whiteboards – some even pasted to the back of toilet doors. A good majority of those lists have a novel that will never materialize. In reality, millions of original stories disappear from the minds of their creators, never to be written, or indeed read by anybody. Sad. So sad.

The fact that you’ve picked up this book means you’ve had an idea in your head, and most probably, you’ve had it stuck in there for a while. You’d like to write that book and meet the burning desire to get published, but you don’t know how to get started. And not only that, you aspire to reach the same target audience as your favourite authors. That’s great. It makes me happy to help someone like you. But you’re going to need all the ammo you can grab if you’re going to compete in the Action/Thriller genre. Not to worry – you’re in good hands.

In this book, I’ll take you on a journey from the beginning stages, right through the entire creative process, and we’ll touch on all the things that works for me, that might also work for you. I’ll take you through everything from setting up your manuscript, to getting your finished book into the hands of your readers where it belongs. Never forget as authors of thrillers, we’re not in the writing business. We’re in the entertainment industry. Once you realise that, your entire mindset changes. Writers who write for business can be found behind desks in skyscrapers and they get to go home at night thinking about anything else but their job. Thriller writers are thinking – dreaming, twenty-four-seven, honing our craft so that we get to keep Mrs Marsh from down the street from falling asleep at night. Entertainment industry. We’re not writing spreads for Better Homes and Gardens. We write to scare the shit out of people who like to read scary stories.

I’ll take you through the conceptual stages. The ‘ideas’ stages. I’ll help you get a grasp on some of the golden rules of creative writing – the things that matter. So many good manuscripts get rejected from publishing purely on something the author has missed. Something so simple. Something so stupid. Did you know that getting noticed and ‘graduating’ from the publishers’ ‘slush pile’ has nothing to do with your story at all? To get off the slush pile, your manuscript must be accompanied firstly by a synopsis. The synopsis must be presented the publisher exactly as requested. Remember the word ‘exactly’. This stage is a test. It’s up to you to pass. We’ll look at this subject more closely later on.

By the time you’re finished here, not only will you have enough inspiration to complete your first draft, but you’ll also have an understanding about how to submit to publishers. You’ll get a grasp on what publishers want and expect, and what they’re looking for; more importantly, what’s trending, and what they’re looking for right now. I’ll devote chapters to helping you reach this next level. Whether you’re thinking of traditional publishing or self-publishing, there’re lots of options, and we’ll look closely at the advantages and disadvantages to both games of play. I’ll give you all the relative info and help you make sound decisions.

Who is this book for?

This book is for the beginning writer. This book is also for those who not only enjoy the process of creative writing but would now like to do something with it. This book is for those who’d like to succeed as an author. It’s for those who’d like to one day forge a new path and launch a career at entertainment style word-craft. This book is also for seasoned writers, and of course, this book is for everyone in between. Who knows? There’s another best seller out there somewhere. How chuffed would I be if I helped make that happen?

Ready? Let’s go.

As at the time of this writing, novellas have made a resurgence back into the mainstream. What’s a novella?

A novella is a short novel spanning from between 40,000 - 50,000 words, where an average novel spans from between 80,000 - 100,000 words. Novellas were once popular in the 1950s–60s and they appeared on the same shelf as graphic novels and comic books. But with the rise in popularity of the eBook, Amazon says, ‘short is the new long.’

First, Let’s Set It Up

Things you’ll need to continue.

Access to a computer

Access to a printer

Access to a word processor or writing software.

Time . . . A whole lotta time.

I can’t assume that everybody knows their way around a word processor. And because of this, we’re going to start at the very beginning. One might think setting up a document in a word processor is a simple task. Just fire up Word, grab a new document, and start typing, right? Oh, how wrong you’d be. Imagine you just went at it willy-nilly for three hundred and fifty odd pages, only to find out the hard way that the formatting is all wrong. And worse than that, you now have three hundred and fifty odd pages of editing the formatting before anybody will even look at it. Formatting is not something to take lightly. If not done correctly, it can ruin the chances of any manuscript, good, bad, or otherwise. But before we begin, let’s take a moment to reflect a little.

Let’s go back to a time when there was no internet. Let’s go back to the time before computers. You may not realise it, but that was only roughly forty years ago. It may seem like a long time, but what if we give it a little perspective? How many books have been written and published throughout history up until the time modern technology changed everything? How many authors had trudged through their career and produced such awe-inspiring works the hard way? It boggles my mind to think about it. And each time I sit down to write, I reflect on what it must’ve been like back then.

I began my writing journey right on the edge of the computer age. I remember my first attempt at having a go at my newly formed writing skills. I purchased my first typewriter at Norman Ross Discounts, (now Harvey Norman) and my typewriter was a whiz-bang electric Brother, and boy was I chuffed. An electric typewriter was going to make my writing so much easier than having to write things out longhand.

Along with my purchase of the typewriter, I purchased a big box of foolscap paper, and I sped home thinking of all the things in my head that I would get the chance to write.

By the