by Elton Gahr

Created on: April 15, 2009

Writing a novel is a marathon and though there may be no wrong or right way to do it i you don't prepare and train you will find yourself halfway through the book exhausted, in pain and uncertain if you can continue. These preparatory steps to writing a novel may not be correct for everyone but starting your novel writing without at least considering them is a little reckless.

Before you can even consider writing a novel you must have characters, plot and setting. Depending on your style you may have dozens of pages of character biographies, written outlines and hand drawn sketches of the places that they will go. You may even find yourself going places with a notepad and a camera, or you may prefer the approach of being surprised by much of what happens. Keep in mind that most of the time you will end up putting in the same amount of effort with each of these approaches, so ask yourself would you rather write an outline or spend your time editing. Neither answer is wrong.

The next step you should consider before writing your novel is to take a few practice jogs. Spend a couple weeks or a month writing some short stories. This will help you find your voice and decided on a style you can feel comfortable with for a few hundred pages. By making these stories about the characters and places in the book you can also begin to learn interesting things about the characters, or find out that this character isn't someone you want to spend the next year with. Either way spending the time to write a few short stories is a good way to prepare.

Once you know the story you want to write and the characters you want to write about you must decide on where the story begins. The advice I have been given that has worked for me is "Start the story as close to the end as you can without cutting anything important". This is good advice and difficult to follow. After a first draft I almost always end up cutting out parts or all of the first chapter and sometimes much of the second. Still, deciding where to begin is an important step.

Starting the first draft of your story can be intimidating. You have spent a considerable amount of time and effort already and this is your first chance to truly get it wrong. The thing to remember is that a first draft is not a finished piece of work. You will be editing, probably numerous times so feel free to leave out things like foreshadowing and background detail. Sometimes it is even useful to put in notes like "add description later" rather than

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