Starting Your Novel

Before you write anything, poetry, a novel, a song, etc., pick a theme or point you want to get across. Maybe you want to praise or criticize a philosophy (example: place the greater good over your own interests). Maybe you want to inspire people just in general life. Maybe you want to persuade them to follow their hearts over their minds. When you do this, show the reality of it. Show the sacrifice it takes to work for the greater good, but also show the rewards. If you do it right, then the readers will agree with you. Perhaps you want to simply share an experience with us. The point is, everybody's got something to tell the world, and it's a sure thing that many people will care. A story about nothing is a nothing of a story.

Plan out what's going to happen before you start to write. Many people like to just jump into writing, and after a couple chapters they discover they have no plot or aren't skilled enough to write the path the story has taken. Plan the main plot, come up with your main characters, and make an antagonist at the very least. I would highly recommend planning a few subplots as well, because if they are well done then the story boost tremendously in interest value. Having numerous subplots and characters tend to make the reader's "lost" in the book. JK Rowling does this expertly in Harry Potter. She gives readers many characters, and most people love all of them, felt connected to them.

So now you've got your plot down, and you know what your story is about. Do you want to use Earth as the setting, or do you want to create your own world? New worlds can be very interesting if they're original (like Tolkein's was). A great way to get readers hooked is to show some differences between your world and the one readers are familiar with, though not fully explain them right away. Phillip Pullman does this rather well in His Dark Materials with daemons. We get to see how they behave and see how important they are, but we don't really know what they are. It gives the readers something else to keep them thinking about.

If you are using Earth, then what time does your story take place? Present day? Thousands of years ago? The future? There are many tools that can get readers interested in your story before they even know the plot. Planning out the basic structure of these will help you add more depth to them once you start writing. Knowing the time it takes place is especially crucial on Earth, because you must know the speech patterns in use then, the culture, etc.

So after you've picked out something you want to tell us and planned everything out, your story should be ready to roll.