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How to write a novel... Check your impulse Authors earnings per - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation
How to write a novel... Check your impulse Authors earnings per - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation
How to write a novel... Check your impulse Authors earnings per year = 5k average Source: Society of Authors So why are you here why isnt your novel already written? Getting started That afternoon there was rain, just as
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Author’s earnings per year = £5k average Source: Society of Authors
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So why are you here – why isn’t your novel already written?
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Getting started ‘That afternoon there was rain, just as she’d said there would be...’
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Why do we abandon our beginnings?
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The haves and the have nots
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“The novel went through many drafts and there were large sections I cut completely. I find the initial writing (as opposed to the subsequent rewriting) hard and the results
- ften feel lumpen.
A novel is such a mess for a long time and that’s what you have to be prepared to deal with – to face this mess every day.” “How I write” Emily Perkins Time Out Interview
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1% inspiration 99% perspiration
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Some key components of a successful first draft
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‘Strong’ characters and good characterisation
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Finding the plot
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‘Immensely diverting … a pacy read, constructed with a crisp control of tension and narrative drive’ Observer
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Structure
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Writing what you know vs research
- either way, proceed with
caution
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Whose story is it anyway? Narrative point of view
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Showing vs telling “dramatise, dramatise, dramatise” Henry James
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Effective dialogue, description, setting...
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Knowing your reader...and by extension your market
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Constructive feedback
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A craft like any other
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Further reading
- How novels work by John Mullan
- Creative Writing: a workbook with readings (ed.
Linda Anderson,)
- The Creative Writing Coursebook: Forty Authors
Share Advice and Exercises for Fiction and Poetry by Julia Bell, Andrew Motion A Creative Writing Handbook: developing dramatic technique, individual style and voice
- From pitch to publication by Carole Blake