by Charles Copeland

Created on: July 23, 2006   Last Updated: August 29, 2010

How to write for novel publication

So you've decided to finally write that novel that's been quietly burning away in the back of your mind. Well, now is the time to set up your goals and expectations. In a perfect world, your approach to the writing craft would always prove your writing's merit. But this is NOT a perfect world, and merit must be earned. So, let's do it right. After all, Steven King won't be around forever, and someone's going to have to fill the void once he hangs up his notepad once and for all.

The idea is to write it all out as fast as you can, just to get the story out, then to go back and refine afterward. Tell the story first. Worry about quality later. Like other forms of art, writing fiction requires the writer to jump through many hoops in order to arrive at the end. There are a number of steps to follow.

1) First ask yourself: What kind of story am I trying to tell? Is it horror (my personal favorite), romance, thriller, science fiction, western, or one of the many other genres available to the human mind? Once you have your genre, half the creative battle is behind you. Think about that: if you don't know what kind of novel you're writing, why bother to start?

Plan ahead and realize the hardest part of writing a novel is the actual act if WRITING IT. Anyone can say they're going to write a novel, but very few of those who say they will ever do. It takes time to write a body of work that will total somewhere in the neighborhood of 75,000 words. Of course, you may choose to write much more than that, but be sure not to overdo it. Telling a story with fewer words is better than rambling on for 700 pages-unless you're the next J. K. Rowling and, as they say, less is more.

Regardless how long your novel will be, plan on devoting a good portion of your life to the furthering of your work. In my personal experience, I've found that the more I write, the more I WANT to write, so, as a result, my social life has been known to suffer. In the end, though, you can't live off the proceeds of something you haven't written.

How do you eat a three-foot sandwich, or write a 75,000 page novel? Slowly and a bit at a time. Set goals for writing, say, 2,000 words per day. If you type at even an average speed (which I now realize I do NOT and presumably never will), you should be able to write 250 words an hour over an 8 hour span, which is a goal that can be easily achieved. If you type faster than that, who knows how many words you can come up with

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