by Ryan Bendall

Created on: August 26, 2008   Last Updated: September 15, 2009

If your considering writing a novel then I think its acceptable for me to assume you are an experienced writer. Experienced as in you simply write, that is all the experience I believe you should need. No matter what anybody tells you, the art of writing comes from within and cannot be put into a person, in my opinion anyways. If you love to write, then that is enough for you to be able to write and produce a novel.

I suggest using a program such as Microsoft word for all your writing needs as an interactive software package has many advantages over the classic pen and paper combo. For example its generally a lot easier to edit your work and change ideas quickly if you write a sentence and then suddenly decide that you could replace it with one better. All you have to do Is hit delete! With the software that comes as standard these days we don't have to be the greatest spellers as the spell checkers will always put you right and in time you'll start to learn from all those mistakes anyway. Also don't worry if your vocabulary is limited as most word programs have a system that can provide ten examples of a similar word with the same meaning with just a simple right click! This will stop you using the same words over and over and repeating yourself which can make a novel seem limited. The technical term for this phenomenon is known as a synonym finder and it helps to provide you with quick word changes to make your novel more vibrant.

For example the word 'big' has the synonyms of 'huge, large, giant, big, titanic, gargantuan' and so on. This can be a very useful tool indeed and it prevents you from limiting yourself to your own vocabulary. It may seem like cheating, but it's a learning curve as well because next time you wont need to use the feature because you've already picked up the new word!

So now you can spell and your vocabulary just became limitless; now you should take a look at punctuation. A basic grasp of sentence structure should be enough to get your novel started. You need to be aware of the three main types of sentences, these are simple, compound and complex.

Simple sentences have just one independent clause and no commas, such as:
"Tom kicked the ball"

Compound sentences have two clauses that are either linked by a coordinating conjunction, such as, but, yet, for or nor, or a conjunctive such as however or therefore. They can also contain a semi colon (;) An example would be:
"Tom kicked the ball high, but Harry still caught it!"

"Tom kicked

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