How To Write A Novel

How to write a novel

I'm currently working on my 14th book, and I'm regularly asked for advice and help on how to write so I thought I'd set this down. This is what works for me, how I do it:

1. Write the OUTLINE of your story--a summary that includes at least one problem/conflict to be solved/resolved and at least one theme.

2. Detail your SETTING--this is the where and when your story happens.

3. Detail your CHARACTER(S)--this is who drives the story; you should also decide who is telling the story: is it the main character, another character or someone outside the story?

4. List your EVENTS--these are the moments of the story, e.g., Robert hits Keith, Thuli gossips about Futhi etc.

5. Plot your EVENTS--that is, decide in which order you will show the events to your readers; this is the shape of the story.

6. Decide on your main THEME(S)--this will determine the slant/bias/perspective you use in your revealing of the events.

7. Begin WRITING.

8. Keep WRITING--set a manageable target for yourself: 3 pages, one page, one paragraph to be written every day until the story is finished.

9. EDIT/REWRITE until you're happy with what you've got.

10. CIRCULATE copies of your story to a few readers and ask them to give you feedback.

11. Write the OUTLINE of a new story.

10.

Dangerous Women

I grew up on the songs of the Eagles; they were the band that got me through college and still brighten my days. I actually met them once, when they were in London recording 'Desperado', their second album. This was around the time they played a gig in London's Royal Festival Hall, a small venue.

I love the harmonies and the guitars but what made the Eagles big were of course the songs--and they're not typical love songs; they're mostly songs about love that has been lost and women that can burn you even as they make your life meaningful. The women are there right from the first Eagles song any of us ever heard: Take It Easy.

I teach a lesson on the lyrics to two of these dangerous women songs: One Of These Nights and Hotel California: 'the full moon is calling/ the fever is high/ the wicked wind whispers and moans... dreams/ screams...been searching for the daughter of the Devil himself/ I've been searching for an Angel in white/ I've been waiting for a woman who's a little of both/ and I can feel her but she's nowhere in sight'. Wow! Always wow! The alliteration, imagery, symbolism and the always human pull of the dark side. This was the band's most creative period and the time of their international breakthrough to stadium superstardom. Well-crafted songs: lasting works of art; stories of dangerous women.

Great, but forgotten writers:1:Frank Yerby

Frank Yerby was a great writer according to any criteria you might choose: he was the first black author to have a novel published and then filmed by Hollywood; he published 33 novels in his career as a novelist; and he sold around 75 million books.

75 million is a lot of books: proof indeed that Yerby had a lot of readers.

Yet his name is not known these days--most of his novels can be picked up quite cheaply in second-hand shops or at fete stalls and the like. Why is this? Probably because Yerby wrote to entertain his readers, not to please critics: his books are not the kind that get prescribed as 'literature'. But they make wonderful reading. The characters are strong and leap from the page: villains are truly nasty (and usually powerful and rich) and heroes are those with good hearts and honest values who stand up against the villains and win through in the end. I discovered Yerby's novels whilst still a teenager and the feeling of joy that I got from reading them has never left me.

The One I Missed

Einstein wrote that the best musical audience is one that can appreciate Mozart's Piano Concerti, implying of course that Mozart's Piano Concerti comprise the best music there is. When I was a student I was fortunate enough to buy a box set of the complete concerti (in an Oxfam or other charity shop): I think it was Anda's cycle.

Since then I've lived with these works and heard them performed by most of the great pianists--Ashkenazy, Brendel, Bilson, et al. All of them--from the Jeunehomme onwards--are great works, though my favourites are K466 onwards.

Imagine then my disappointment that I missed the greatest concert of all time! It was of K466, the Dminor, in December 1794: the soloist was a certain Ludwig Van Beethoven. No matter that I wasn't yet born--I'm still disappointed that I missed it.

Silent witnesses

What a way to start a day! I'm sitting in the dining room eating breakfast; my housekeeper is watching the world go past our house. This is what we do every morning. Then, Hawu! she suddenly exclaims. I look left through a window and see a Toyota 4x4 come through my fence, flip upside down, and start rolling rapidly towards my house. By now, the housekeeper is screaming; I'm rooted to my chair, watching the vehicle rolling, my adrenalin racing.
There are people inside the vehicle.
I watch the Toyota turn a few more times then come to a dead stop before a tree stump, ten metres in front of my house.
Miraculously the people survived.
Very quickly there's a crowd by my yard. Then an ambulance arrives; a man from the newspaper arrives; and finally a policeman arrives. The policeman explains that this accident had caused another one a little further down the hill.
Half-an-hour later the people from the car are on their way to the hospital, the crowd has gone, the police and newspaper men are gone; only the broken fence and battered vehicle remain as silent witnesses to the morning's drama.

New Ubuntu Look:

after years of mud (read 'brown' look), the next Ubuntu rollout-- Lucid --
will have a new look. The DarkTheme, which is similar to the one I use now (on Mint), and the LightTheme, which reminds me of my Macbooks:

It might have been a Wednesday

It might have been a Wednesday

There was a loose button on your blouse and you, bra-less, beneath it. You didn't know, but that loose button unbuttoned my soul, led me through the Valley of the Shadow of Death and brought me, cup overflowing, into the Red House of Everlasting Life. Yes, I know it sounds dramatic; but sometimes it's the little things that make your day.

Everywhere, books

She calls it juicing the fruit, says everyone should do it.
"But it's risky, isn't it?" I asked.
"Nothing's risky. Or everything is."
"Banned in the book of Deuteronomy."
"Probably."
"Certainly."
"Not in private."
"Here isn't private."
We were in the back of a bookshop: dusty dust-covers, sagging shelves, second-hand books about second-hand love or forbidden triangles. Everywhere, books; everywhere, shelves screening us from the door where the old man was drowsy in the afternoon heat. Apart from us and the old man the shop was empty.
"Do you know that poem by Cavafy?" she asked, "in the shop?"
"I know it," I said.
"And the one in the taverna?"
"A divine July was blazing."
"Yes," she said. "Yes."
"Public places."
"Private passions."
Cavafy, yes. The old man of Alexandria, the great poet of desire, the desire of minds mastered by the heat of the day and the heat of the flesh.
"I wonder if there's any Cavafy here?" I said.
"Don't change the subject," she said.
We weren't in the shop for more than forty minutes. At some point it began raining: fat, moist summer drops spattering the shop's windows and disturbing the dust of the quiet street outside.
When we left I asked the bookseller if he had anything by Cavafy. Either he didn't understand or else he misunderstood. If we wanted coffee, we could get it further down the road, he said.

16th February

Outside, a grass-cutting-machine drones like a giant bee and a lonely far-off bird sings; just next door, a child cries, a mother shouts, and a phone rings; on the page before me Carrol's Walrus and the Carpenter still speak of cabbages and kings; but I, skittish, cannot concentrate on any of these things, because I am thinking of you and wishing you were here.

Brown

She was a brown girl, dressed in brown; her friend was dressed in pink. I wasn't planning on staying, but she forced me to rethink: it wasn't the ambience and it wasn't the place--I've always been a victim for a pretty face.

Touch

Touch

"You're dangerously pretty," I said. "Dangerous to all, even yourself. But especially to me." That she was pretty was easy to see but the danger that lurked behind her eyes was dimmed, even in sunlight. It isn't right, I thought, that beauty should present such a risk.

"But you're here," she said. "You needn't have stayed."

"You wanted me to," I replied. It was true; it was in her eyes.

We left the bar; went to the car. Then I drove a way, but not too far.

"I hear you're famous," she said. "You're dangerous too. And you like pretty women."

"What man doesn't?" I said. "It's the way we're made."

The shadows were crawling across the park. They were mostly long and thin, like stretched fingers without knuckles and without nails. Already they had reached the perimeter wall and the more-than-two-years-old graffiti that was scrawled there, acclaim for a once-popular political leader who was now discredited. 'Viva X!' it proclaimed. That was all.

In the car, we sat side-by-side, silently, almost as if we were afraid to breathe. Perhaps we were. We were both waiting for something to happen, waiting for life to intervene.

"Touch me and I'll scream," she said. "Don't touch me and I'll die."

What else could I do? I took a deep breath. And. Touched. Her.

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