I’ve published twenty-one novels, so I’ve got something of a routine down when it comes to novel preparation and planning. But that wasn’t always the case. When I wrote my first literary novel, The Cure for Death by Lightning, I felt I needed to write “organically.” In other words, I thought I needed to go on a meandering journey towards finding my story. Sound familiar? And there is something to that idea. Writing literary is different than writing commercial fiction. In his blog on this menu, BC writer Bill Stenson likens writing literary fiction to planning a vacation. You may organize the flight and hotel, but you want to stay open to the serendipity that pulls you this way and that along the way.
But here’s the thing: that first novel took me seven years to write. Seven frickin’ years! And I spent much of that time hitting my head against the desk. I finally realized that if I didn’t put the time and effort into fully understanding conflict and structure, and planned each project accordingly, writing a novel would take a very long time and be so much more frustrating than it had to be.
So, I learned about structure and outlining and hey, the next literary novel took way less time. I wrote it in about two years. And as my first novel had been, my second was also short-listed for the ScotiaBank Giller Prize, thank you very much. Now, I’m pulling together complete drafts of my more commercial projects, like my thrillers, in under a year, and my hi-lo middle school books in a month or two.
Okay, so I’ve sold you on the idea of planning your project. What does novel prep look like exactly? Here’s how I, at least, approach the preparation stage of writing a novel.
Draw mind maps.
I’m all about doodling. Years ago, when I was a cub reporter, I also published a weekly cartoon in the paper. So, even now, doodling is part of my process. I find the biggest pieces of paper I can find, and I make spider drawings or mind maps as I work out aspects of my projects. Here’s one I doodled for my hi-lo middle school novel Iggy’s World: