I wanted to write a novel in 10 weeks or so and so I knew I was going to have to be disciplined. I was following a structured course which taught me that the first thing I must do was to decide on the theme. What was my book going to be about? Now when I talk about my novel's theme I do not mean the plot, the idea or the approach I was going to use, I mean the heart of my novel. Now I know that some people may be confusing the theme with the story idea, here. But, as Joanne Reid points out in "How to Write a Novel in 10 Weeks", a module in the "Write Your Way To Freedom", they are just not the same.
Let us look at the idea first.
Unless we have got a good strong, focused idea for the story, you and I will more than likely dry up somewhere round about page 30 or so of our manuscript.
To get this thing written we need to be excited by the book we have in mind. It has to matter to us and often the age old adage of "writing about what you know" will be the best advice for you or I to take. Now what do we know about that can be turned into the novel? Well we probably will find that we actually know a great deal.
As Joanne says, there is:
· Personal experience
· Actual experience
· What-if personal experience
· Philosophical conclusion based on experience
· Something we heard about
· History
· A friend's suggestion
· Strong feelings against something
· Strong feelings for something
· Current event
· Chance incident
· Desire for adventure
· New inventions
· Social upheavals
· Strong interest in some business
Setting up Basic Conflict
So having read Joanne's list I moved on to thinking about the basic conflict. All novels need a basic conflict and to establish this conflict, we need to have two things: a protagonist (or protagonists) and secondly, an environment.
In this course I learnt that the environment could spring from (1) the physical setting(s), (2) the atmosphere created by the social situation, or (3) the emotional mood.
Setting the Stage
Moving on to this section, I was taught that I should put the protagonist(s) in conflict with either his or her own environment, or the environment of others. Here the lesson gave me 10 principles for placing the protagonist in conflict:
1. Something changes in the environment.
2. Moving the protagonist from one environment to another.
3. Put the protagonist in an environment that is in conflict with other environments.
4. Put the protagonist in an environment he or she wants to change.
5. Give the protagonist an environment to conquer.
6. Put him or her in a environment he or she wants to escape.
7. Put the protagonist in an environment where he or she is not wanted.
8. Put the protagonist in an environment for which he or she is unsuited.
9. Change the protagonist's status quo in his or her environment.
10.Change the status quo of the environment.
Joanne tells her students to give the protagonist a chief motivating force with a tangible object. His or her response to the environment yields a determination to do something about it to achieve some tangible objective. This is the chief motivating force. It also helps, she says, if you exaggerate the protagonist's reaction to the environment.
You need to have an idea of what the conflict might be before you begin plotting.
Theme
Everywhere that we look we will find ideas that can be used for novels. Then, once we have that idea we must focus in on the overriding subject matter of the idea. We must also seek to understand our own attitude towards it and this attitude should be strong and clear.
For example: I am thinking of writing a novel about Admiral Horatio Nelson. The principal subject matter is about an ordinary man who joined the Royal Navy as a boy and was sea-sick every time he went out to sea and yet he became a military tactician and nation's hero who captures the imagination of millions of people even to this day. I want to show that people need heroes for very personal reasons and this is my attitude in the novel that I am hoping I will now write. My next step is to come up with the approach that I shall take. The reason why I want to write the book and for this I need a statement of purpose to make clear my approach to the subject.
My purpose in writing about Lord Nelson is to prove that people need heroes so baldly that they will overlook any of their hero's negative character traits. The theme I am perusing is fame and my approach to fame is that people in our society need fame so badly that they will put certain people on pedestals irrespective of any failures that he may have had. In Nelson's case and the British nation, it is literally a statute on a column in London at Trafalgar Square. He was undoubtedly a great man, but like us all he still had his human flaws.
I am following the Write Your Way To Freedom module on Writing a Novel in 10 Weeks to help me achieve this aim. So I shall firstly be assessing my idea to see if it is strong, next I will consider what the basic conflict is to be before setting the stage and lastly working on the theme.
Want to read the module "Write a Novel in 10 weeks" in the Write Your Way To Freedom course? take a look here
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Nick_Thorne
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