Your Unique Genre
(Steps 32-35)
In these steps you’ll identify as many genres as you can that have elements you’d like to include in your novel. You’ll list these elements and then draw upon them to fashion a unique genre for your story that reflects familiar aspects of overused genre formulas yet creates an individual identity and feel for your novel.
Your Thematic Message (Steps 29, 30, 31)
Your thematic message will explore a particular human quality such as greed, denial, or living in fantasy. The message need not be about something bad, but could be about the value of a positive quality. This value is usually wrapped around a personal issue expressed through your Main Character. In these steps, you’ll explore your Main Character’s personal issues and select one to be the focus of your novel’s message.
The Main Character represents the reader’s position in the story, but this is not always the Protagonist. While in a football game the Protagonist may be the quarterback, a story could be told through the eyes of any of the players on the field. The Protagonist is defined as the character who is the prime mover of the effort to achieve the story goal logistically. The Main Character, however, is the character with whom the readers most identify and around whom the passion of the story seems to revolve. It is the Main Character who must grapple with a personal or moral issue and is the center of the story’s message.
In this step, even if you are already completely sure of who your main character is, you’ll examine each character and look at the story through his or her eyes to see if there might be an even stronger viewpoint from which your readers might experience your story first hand.
Write Your Novel Step by Step (24)
Selecting Your Novel’s Cast from their Dossiers
In previous steps you created dossiers for each of your prospective cast members. Now you’ll reference that material in choosing the candidates you want to populate your novel.
Step 22 Your Characters’ Points of View) is now available here.
You know how you see your story, but what does it look to your characters? In this step, you’ll have each of your characters write a paragraph in his or her own unique voice describing how your story looks from their point of view within it.
Step 21 (Auditioning Your Cast) is now available here.
In this step you interview your potential cast members and have each character write a short bio of himself or herself, all of which will become part of their dossier.
In steps to come, you’ll use these dossiers to determine which characters you want to hire for your novel’s cast.
Write Your Novel Step by Step
Step 1 – The Four Stages of Writing a Novel. This is the first in a new series of videos that are a companion piece to the book. In this step, you’ll learn a better method to carry you from concept to completion.
The Expected Characters
In Step 11 you made a list of all the characters explicitly named in your revised synopsis. Now list all the characters that your synopsis doesn’t specifically name, but that would almost be expected in such a story. Include any additional characters you intend to employ but didn’t actually spell out in your synopsis. Again, list them by role and name if one comes to mind.
Example:
Suppose a story is described as the tribulations of a town Marshall trying to fend off a gang of outlaws who bleed the town dry.
The only specifically called for characters are the Marshall and the gang, which you would have listed in Step 10. But, you’d also expect the gang to have a leader and the town to have a mayor. The Marshall might have a deputy. And, if the town is being bled dry, then some businessmen and shopkeepers would be in order as well.
So, you would list these additional implied characters as:
Gang Leader
Mayor
Deputy (John Justice)
Businessmen
Shopkeepers
Don’t list every character you can possibly imagine – we’ll expand our cast in other areas in steps to come. The task here is no more than to list all those characters most strongly implied – the ones that the plot or situation virtually calls for but doesn’t actually name.
Add these new characters below those in you listed in Step 11. Then, in the next step we’ll add some more.
Buy the book, try the software!
This article was drawn from our book, Write Your Novel Step by Step and our StoryWeaver Step-by-Step Story Development Software that guide your from concept to completion of your novel.
The book is available in paperback and for your Kindle
The software is available for Windows & Macintosh
Who’s There?
Congratulations! You’ve completed the first part of your journey toward a completed novel. It was a heck of a lot of work, but it is all about to pay off.
From here on out, we’ll be drawing on material you’ve already created. What’s more, each step from this point forward is far less complicated, requires far less effort and is shorter to boot!
In this step, for example, we’re going to look for characters in the material you’ve already created. You don’t have to invent anything new. In fact, it is important that you don’t!
Read through your revised synopsis from Step 10 while asking yourself “who’s there?” Make a list of all the characters explicitly called for in your story, as it is worded.
To be clear, don’t list any characters you have in mind but didn’t actually spell out in your work – just the ones who actually appear in the text.
You may have given some of these characters names. Others, you may have described simply by their roles in the story, such as Mercenary, John’s Wife, Village Idiot, etc.
If a character does not yet have a role, give them one as a place-
If a character does not yet have a name, don’t hold yourself up trying to think of one now. Well have a whole step devoted to inventing interesting character names down the line.
For now, just list the characters actually spelled out specifically in your synopsis as it stands.
Example:
John –
An Archeologist
Painless Pete –
A Clown
A Freelance Birdwatcher
Do NOT include any characters you have in mind but didn’t actually mention. Do NOT include any characters who may be inferred but aren’t actually identified. All those other characters will be dealt with in the next few steps.
So, get on with it and answer the burning question, “Who’s There?”
Buy the book, try the software!
This article was drawn from our book, Write Your Novel Step by Step and our StoryWeaver Step-by-Step Story Development Software that guide your from concept to completion of your novel.
The book is available in paperback and for your Kindle
The software is available for Windows & Macintosh
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