It's been FOREVER since I've posted! Here's why...

I had to write a research paper over the holiday break. I thought I'd post it, because I cover a lot of novel writing techniques that someone might find useful.

On a sidenote, be praying for me. I'm feeling called to be a missionary, but I don't know if it's final, if you know what I mean. :) Pray I make the right decision for the right reason, and I don't kill myself with overwork this summer! Also, a car would be nice...a Ford Ranger.

Anyway, here it is...




Novel writers use many techniques to evoke emotion, inspire, motivate, and inform readers that many people are not aware of. These techniques, used in the proper doses, make a book more rewarding for readers and increase the beauty of the story.

The best thing any writer can do to further his craft is to write well. Without a high-quality writing style, a novice writer can expect little, if any, response from an audience. Perhaps the best thing a writer can do for his audience to “show, not tell” his story. This phrase has made itself familiar in the writing industry, and essentially it means to use powerful descriptions and characters’ actions to reveal personality.

For example, this is showing: “Joe’s fingers clawed into the cracks in the cliff as sweat coursed down his face and the wind tried ripping him off into dizzying space.”
This is telling: “Joe held onto the cliff as the wind blew him around.”

Noah Lukeman in his book The First Five Pages, page 119, says, “It is the writer’s job to show us what his characters are like, not by what he says about them, but by their actions. A writer can spend a page telling his character is a crook, or he can show it in one sentence, by simply describing him taking a twenty-dollar bill from someone’s pocket, and letting the reader judge [the character] for himself.”

Another characteristic of strong writing entails using powerful verbs. Weak verbs include: is, are, was, were, etc. A weak verb posses in its letters the venom to slow your work and sap the life from your pages. Suppose you write a 300-page book. Assume you place at least one weak verb in every other sentence. By the time your victimized reader closes the manuscript, how many pages of fluff do you think the reader choked on?

A strong verb, on the other hand, takes control of the subject, works it over, and hurls it at the reader with such force that they want to keep reading. Searching for the right verb, the one that rings in a reader’s ears, is guaranteed to pay off.

Fewer adverbs and adjectives will go a long way towards putting life in a story as well. Lukeman says on page 31 of his book, “Most people who come to writing for the first time think they bring their nouns and verbs to life by piling on adjectives and adverbs, that by describing a day as ‘hot, dry, bright and dusty’ they make it more vivid. Almost always the opposite is true.”

Using as few adjectives and adverbs as possible forces the writer to use stronger nouns and verbs. Instead of describing a house as “small, old, and dangerous” a writer can simply say “shack” and show the main character’s reactions as floorboards creak under his feet and he dusts aside cobwebs.

As a writer the importance of varying sentence structure can’t be underestimated. In a workshop given by Bob Hostetler at the Writing for the Soul conference, Hostetler says, “You need a variation in [sentence] length. So stride for variety and length, but also strive for variety (scan it! I don’t know any way to do it other than to scan it.) for structure as well. Sprinkling the simple sentences in among the complex [sentences].”

After hurdling over the writing style aspect of writing, a novice novelist is ready to go deeper into his story, particularly with characterization. Developing a character’s traits often proves the most strenuous, and rewarding. Without a solid grasp on character-building the reader won’t captivate the reader.

Writers need to remember to build the character’s foundation and not become fixated on details. Basic questions of where the person was born, height, weight, what his job is, etc., are all things the writer needs to know.

However, writers should look to inner qualities more than outward appearances. Brandilyn Collins says in Getting into Character, page 14, “Her [the character being created] appearance may attract you, but her inner values are what will make her compelling.”

Understanding what the character really wants above all else will give you a good feel for the person you are creating. Pretend you are interviewing your character and ask questions like why he acts so tough? Is it something that happened in his past? Is he trying to prove something to someone? When he seems mad, is he mad at others or at himself?

Nancy Kress says in Dynamic Characters, page 159, “What constitutes as a conflict should grow out of what your character values, what he struggles for, what matters to him individually. For some characters, leaving home (physically, emotionally) is an immense struggle. Others just pack and go.”

The important thing to remember is to keep delving deeper and deeper until you have an intriguing character. Like a prince who strives to save his father’s kingdom after it was conquered, even though he hates his father.

After developing characters to their maximum depth, it’s time for tryouts. It’s time to choose which character to narrate the story through and will ultimately become what novelists call the “view point character.”

This might be one of the most critical decisions you will make in the whole book. Your character will either carry your story to infinity and beyond, or he’ll drag your work to the ground. From this character will decide the ultimate texture of your work. Can you imagine what the Lord of the Rings would be like if it had been told from Saruman’s perspective instead of Frodo’s?

You have to decide which character brings the most interesting perspective to the story, who the readers will like or at least admire for the duration of the book. As Sol Stein says in Stein on Writing, page 136, “…be sure to choose for each scene the character who is most affected by the events of that scene.”

Different styles of point of view (POV) exist at the writer’s disposal. No matter what form of POV you choose, you must stay in one person’s perspective throughout the chapter or scene. Throughout the duration of a book use only three POV characters or else it becomes hard for the reader to follow the story.

Third person narration makes itself the prominent choice in modern writing. It looks like this, “Bob turned the corner and bumped into Suzan.”

First person, another popular POV, sounds as though the character himself is telling the story. “I turned the corner and bumped into Suzan.”

Second person POV is essentially trying to make the reader think he is the character. “You turned the corner and bumped into Suzan.”

This form of POV doesn’t see much action, and Stein says of it in his book on page 130, “Forget it.”

Finally, there is omniscient POV. This perspective offers a wide view on the scene. This gives the writer the ability to skip from view point to view point in the same scene. New writers need to be wary of choosing this technique just because it seems to involve less discipline than the other methods, as Stein says on page 137 of Stein on Writing, “The omniscient POV lacks discipline. Because the author can stray into anyone’s head, it is hard to gain credibility and even harder to gain close emotional rapport with the readers.”

A good character comes alive in a believable setting. There are different kinds of settings, but the general ones are where, when, and what culture the story takes place in. All these have an effect on the story’s outcome.

Dave Lambert said in a workshop given in the Writing for the Soul conference, “Not only does place and time affect each other, but then together they affect the characters and the development of the story.”

The geographical background is the kind of setting writers think about when they consider setting. Every geographical settings affect the reader in different ways. Can you imagine watching The Black Knight set in Oklahoma? The feeling of the city of Gotham, and the physiological impact a city entails, made a perfect setting for Batman.

Using time properly also can enhance a writer’s material. Different epochs in history have different effects on readers, just as the geographical setting does. A story written about a painter during the Renaissance will have a different effect than a story about the same character during WWII.

Even a writer of modern stories needs to consider time. If he knows what period he will be writing in, it’s time to consider the time of year, the day of the week, and the time of day. Each of these choices will put the reader in a different world.

The cultural setting also plays a large role in the story. A writer in choosing a setting does well when he considers what culture it will be in, or what culture it will mirror. Making this distinction puts the story’s main character in a position where he develops. He must decide if he will stand out, conform, or contribute to the culture.

Scene setting from scene to scene requires some practice, but knowing a few things helps. Using good details, details that say something specifically about a setting, goes a long way in making a setting readers will be sucked into. A baseball bat during a baseball game means something different than someone walking into a gas station with a bat, and it prepares the readers for what they should expect.

Now, after mastering these things, it is time to move onto some more complex techniques novel writers use to make a story more dramatic.

When you walk into a room you can see what is happening. You know what is happening now, but you want to know what happened before you walked onto the scene. That is what novel writers call back story.

A reader enters the world you’ve created and sees your characters acting, but he wants to know what made them that way. Writers can tantalize writers by giving little hints at what happened in the past, till the reader is engrossed not only in the future of the story, but in its past as well.

Flashbacks also enhance a reader’s experience. They are instances in the story where the main character remembers something fairly dramatic about his past. These scenes let the reader know what happened in the past, and also they develop the main character. Many editors don’t like flashbacks, however, because they have the risk of pulling the reader out of the world that’s been created.

Stein says on page 144 of his book, “A good flashback is a scene that is depicted exactly as it would be in the present story except for how it is introduced and how the present story is joined.”

It’s important to resist slipping into a past tense when writing these, and the reader needs a concrete way to know when the flashback starts and when it ends. For instance, the main character at a stoplight may have a flashback about a car hitting his mother at an intersection. The flashback could end when someone behind him hunks for him to go.

Many writers experience a phase in their book when the tension in the story relaxes. This is dangerous and should be avoided.

Stein says on page 97 of Stein on Writing, “Your predecessor, a storyteller of many centuries ago, recited his stories around a fire. If he failed to arouse his listener’s anticipation and droned on, or if his audience guessed what happened next, they either fell asleep or killed him.”

One technique in keeping tension in a story is to adopt more than one viewpoint. Now the writer can end a chapter with a character at gunpoint, spend a chapter showing the actions of another person, end that chapter with a character hanging from a cliff, and start up with another character in another place. Thrill writers utilize this technique most, but it is still effective in other genres.

Writers work hard at their craft. All the aspects of writing a novel make up a story, and a writer who invests the time and effort into mastering them will have a solid chance of enthralling his readers and impacting them with his message.







Works Cited

Collins, Brandilyn. Getting Into Character. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2002.
Hostetler, Bob. In a workshop given during the 2008 Writing for the Soul Conference.
Kress, Nancy. Dynamic Characters. Cincinnati: Writer’s Digest Books, 1998.
Lambert, Dave. In a workshop given during the 2008 Writing for the Soul Conference.
Lukeman, Noah. The First Five Pages. New York: Fireside, 2000.
Stein, Sol. Stein on Writing. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995.