Thursday, June 14, 2007

JK: Writing the Historical Novel


WRITING THE HISTORICAL NOVEL –
JANE KIRKPATRICK’S TIPS

1. Begin with an unanswered question or something strange you want to thoroughly explore – a person, an incident, a time period that intrigues – a story that calls your name and won’t let you go. Don’t write unless you have to.
2. Write one sentence each to answer these questions:
What’s my story about?
What do I feel deeply about in this story?
How do I hope a reader will be changed by reading this story?
3. Choose a title to frame your story and post it with your three answers in your writing space where you can easily see them to guide you during the muddle in the middle.
4. Create a timeline of your character’s important life events; create a timeline of world or regional events that might have affected your character or that they’d have spoken about over their suppers. Decide on an opening time period and an ending time.
5. Begin writing before you think you should. (There will always be more to research) Write even when you’re not inspired. (There will always be dry scratchy coughs).Create a schedule and stick with it.
6. With selected language, create a mood, a sense of time, era, and attitude within the first three paragraphs of your story.
7. Give your protagonist a meaningful desire both external and internal and show them doing something interesting as the story begins.
8. By the end of the first chapter, an event must happen that moves the story forward toward your character achieving their desire as well as identifying early barriers to your character’s achieving that desire.
9. Weave landscape, relationships, spirituality and work throughout the plot.
10. Give your reader new information, connection and meaning showing them how historical lives have relevance for living in our contemporary world.
11. Write as though running a race without listening too closely to your interior critic. Pick an ending date by which you’ll finish your novel.
12. Finish with your protagonist achieving their desires, both internal and external, in a climax scene; then quickly get out of the story wrapping up loose threads.
13. Go back and repeat question two to see how the story has changed you and its own direction now that your story is finished.
14. Let the story sit two weeks then edit using Self-editing for Fiction Writers by Rennie Browne and Dave King or A Writer’s Guide to Fiction by Elizabeth Lyon or other excellent craft books.
15. Imagine the back cover copy; write your synopsis and send it out or pitch at a writer’s conference. You did it!
Jane Kirkpatrick, www.jkbooks.com www.janekirkpatrick.blogspot.com

2 Comments:

At 12:23 PM, Blogger Kay Day said...

Well, you make it sound easy!
Maybe I CAN do it.

 
At 3:02 PM, Blogger jeff adams said...

Useful-thank you. But as the man said(or woman):learn the rules of writing and then break them!(George Orwell?)

 

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