Welcome to A Novel Approach. If this is your first issue, I encourage you to check out my back issues for more tips on how to write a novel. It's my fondest hope that I can help other writers do the best they can do.

If you have any specific aspects about novel writing you'd like me to address in future issues, please feel free to contact me and let me know what those are. Thank you for your interest, and here's to better writing!

Writing a First Novel Part 4 -
Plotting: More Twists and Turns

Great. Now a good plot has more than one conflict and more than one story line. If your novel only has one conflict, your readers will be bored before you're done, and walk away from the story.

So, how do you come up with more conflicts?

Simple. By thinking of a multitude of bad things to stand in the way of your hero getting to his goal.


Roadblocks For Success

Everyone tries to get around roadblocks to their success. Your hero or heroine should be no different. Creating those roadblocks will make your novel a success.

You can have more than one large conflict in your novel, as long as you're sure which one is the MAIN one and keep it front and center for most of the book. But that doesn't mean your heroine can't also have a huge conflict with her life's love, or with her boss, her mother, her father...

You name it, and you'll find more obstacles to slow her down.

In my first fantasy novel, the main conflict for my hero is to get himself into the music guild (where he's very unwelcome and it's dangerous to be) at a specific time and place. No matter the consequences.

Another "main" conflict for him, at this point in his life, is to make sure no one knows his last name. A task that becomes increasingly difficult the longer he's in the music guild.

In addition, he has to fight prejudice everywhere he goes because of his heritage, face his family's arch enemy at one point, try to keep a girl from falling in love with him (for her safety), and constantly dodge the guild's biggest bully, who is forever pounding on the hero.

Obviously, he's got his hands full. But that's as it should be. If it was easy for him to join the music guild and hide his notorious last name, the novel wouldn't be any fun to read.

So whatever your main conflict is in your current novel, find some more smaller ones to tag along to the end.


How To Balance the Act

I've read a few books where the author seems to gratuitously toss obstacles in the way of the protagonist without rhyme or reason. As if that makes a good book.

Don't try that! That is not how to be good at writing a first novel, or a tenth. Your plot has to make sense, and all the twists and turns have to relate to the main conflict and the main characters, or you'll only have a jumble of action scenes that don't make a story.

To create underlying conflicts, ask yourself "What other goal (besides the main one) does my protagonist have? How can he or she be tripped up trying to attain that goal?"

The answers to those questions help you come up with other conflicts.

Then do the same with other main characters, like the protagonist's love interest or parent or child. Whoever else is important to the story can carry some conflict alongside the protagonist.

Don't forget to play the same game with the antagonist, too. You may find a couple of great sub-conflicts by questioning your villain as well.

Then, once you have all the conflicts you think you need, try to lay them out in logical, intertwining order. You may find yourself writing sections of your novel out of order, then figuring out where each section belongs later on. Don't worry. That's part of rewriting, and you'll have plenty of time to straighten out the plot line then.

As long as you include enough roadblocks so that the crisis appears to be insurmountable and the climax really is a climax, you've done your job.

We'll discuss those "endings" in the next installment of writing a first novel.

Between now and then, happy plotting!


More Tips on Plot

For more information about developing a plot, click on any of the links below for my other web pages about plotting.


Plot
Action
Book Themes
Developing a Plot
Drama
Novel Outline
Novel Structure

Helen Keller says it well. Your protagonist needs the same fire to walk through as real people need to develop character. So pit your heroes and heroines against high odds. Your readers will be delighted.

Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved. ~ Helen Keller