What I Learned from Writing my First Novel

First, let’s back up. My writing took rough shape when I won a writing contest at age 12, It was a short story about my cat, called Mog and it won me a year’s pass to our local movie theatre and a little publicity in our local paper. I don’t remember all the details, but the movie pass was wonderful, and opened my eyes to cinema, stories and characters. My next claim to fame was a high school textbook, co-authored and well received with several reprints. I wrote my first novel – 3 WISE MEN – following an idea about the power of perfume and the details fell into place after a trip my wife and I took to Europe. I self published and was able to revise and improve over several months. So, what did I learn from writing this first novel:

Start you second novel as soon as possible as it will always be better

I guess I need to qualify what “better” means. It can be summed up this way; a second novel will most likely have more nuanced themes and a more interesting/complex plot with improved conflict, characters with depth, and be a more fulfilling story for your readers. I can remember being quite angry at the thought that “your first book is always your worst’ but, in some ways, it is. In my case, I made several re-writes of 3 WISE MEN that improved it. However, even after several great reviews, I agree that first books are lacking the quality of subsequent ones. My second manuscript was built on the lessons of the first and, by this stage, I had a greater sense of my personal writing style. Yes, my first novel was not bad at all (based on reader feedback), but my second has a quality that I know is better, even before an editor gets his or her scissors to it.

What’s in a Name?

What’s in a name? Everything. A few years ago a Chinese friend of mine rang to ask if New Zealand baby names had meanings. “Of course,” I said. He next asked, “What name means mistake?”

Very funny but, the other day, I was editing my novel when I came across the names of two agents—spies in fact. Their names were Oleg and Ivan. How lame could I be; these are not how spies get their names. In fact, they get code words, so I needed to change them. I renamed one Neon and the other Archie. However, Archie is the name of a son to a very famous person who has hogged the news recently, so I had to change it again. Fortunately, I came up with a suitable alternative one night and am happy now. In my first novel, 3 WISE MEN, the three main character names had to fit their country of birth. The moral to all this;

Be careful how you name your characters.

Which leads to another quandary; can I use real company names in a novel? That’s for another post 🙂

Another Reader Review

I have finished reading 3 WISE MEN. I have to say that, for me, the story was right up there with what David Baldacci and James Patterson write. I enjoyed the whole story and was somewhat disappointed when xxx was killed off and I guess for that matter the same with xxx…I look forward to Jak’s next adventure.” by Les Wills [reply: my next thriller does not feature Jak, but I have plans to use him again. ]

Duck for Cover

Duck for cover – the new book cover, that is. After much back and forth with my designer, the final version has come through for my revised first thriller. It looks something like this:

Yes, you are the first ones on the planet to see this new look! It just needs a minor tweak with the sizing and it will be ready to launch. The gap on the lower back cover is for the ISBN, etc. BTW, this is why I don’t recommend self-publishing—I should be spending my time writing and not worrying about book cover design, re-writing, correcting errors, uploading files, etc. [You can order a copy of 3 WISE MEN here]

On a Cold and Rainy Day

What to do on a cold and rainy day? I could finish painting the spare bedroom, but the weather is damp and the paint won’t dry very well. I could take my wife out for a coffee, but she is ill and resting. I could keep editing my new book—or, rather, what I call fine-editing since the major editing is finished. No, I need a new inspiration. So, I decide to work on my first book; produce a new cover, revise the first chapter and update the About the Author page. My goal is to have this done in three days. Meanwhile, my darling publisher Amazon have changed their Kindle format from .mobi to .pub, so that requires more work :-). The next day, I have a head cold and don’t feel like doing much at all. But, the weather is warmer and the painting is almost finished. I’m praying for a better week ahead and a new-look to the bedroom as well as my first book. More news to follow if all goes well. {PS: good progress on both the bedroom renovation and book revisions. The text changes are done and have been uploaded to Amazon. Now I am working with my illustrator with final touches to the cover. All will be revealed soon}

The Day of the Jackal Sets a High Bar for Thrillers

Author Lee Child has published 25 thrillers, featuring Jack Reacher, which have sold more than 100 million copies worldwide.So when he says The Day Of The Jackal is “a year-zero, game-changing thriller, one of the most significant of all time” you listen.

It is 50 years since the book by Frederick Forsyth was published but, in a new introduction to a special anniversary edition, Child says it still feels “luminously fresh and new”.

And no-one is more surprised than Forsyth himself. Not only was it his first novel, but also he tells the BBC: “I’d never written a word of fiction in my life.”

Back in 1970, the former RAF pilot and war correspondent was out of work. “[I was] skint, in debt, no flat, no car, no nothing and I just thought, ‘How do I get myself out of this hole?’ And I came up with probably the zaniest solution – write a novel,” he says.

Forsyth “dashed off” The Day Of The Jackal quickly on an old typewriter in 35 days. It is a gripping tale, set in 1963, about an Englishman hired to assassinate the French president at the time, Charles de Gaulle. But publishers were not interested. After all de Gaulle was very much alive, the mission had obviously failed, so where was the suspense? That, says Child, is the key to its success.

“It had a wholly new approach. It was talking about how things were done, rather than would something succeed. [read more from the BBC here]. PS: I smiled when I read this article and hope that my new thriller is a success because the mission given to the lead character fails to unfold in the way we would expect. (oops, did I give too much away?)

Unnecessary Characters

Another dilemma—what to do with unwanted or unnecessary characters. The best idea is to let them go, but do it in such a way that it provides more tension for the main character(s). In my first thriller, the main character – Jack Colins – is chased by a woman who attempts to discover his secret. She sits next to him on a train ride to Milan and hounds her way into his life to the point of being more than annoying. At a crucial moment, Jack discovers her body in an ante-room in a small church and it’s not a pretty scene. But, her demise piles more pressure on Jack and he is forced to flee to safety in an e-type Jaguar, aided by his sister. Unfortunately, she also becomes an ‘unnecessary character’ and …. no more spoilers. But, if you really want to find out what happens to my unwanted characters, why not buy my book? PS: the e-type is yellow; it just had to be yellow.

Revise, Revise, or be Reviled

Maggie Shipstead (left) writes, “John Gardner famously wrote that fiction should be a “vivid, continuous dream,” but some readers’ willingness to dream is more robust than others. Some people will shut a book forever at the first sign of an error, their trust in the writer and their suspension of disbelief irrevocably lost. Others will happily read along through almost anything, swallowing the most preposterous plot points, the most egregious anachronisms, and the most glaring inconsistencies…But I think sloppiness is worth trying to avoid, both out of pure principle (why get something wrong when you could get it right?) and because mistakes can be indicative of an author not pressing hard enough on the world she’s building, not making it sturdy enough, settling for a facade.” In her article, Maggie mentions good, or ill-meaning, folks who delighted in pointing out errors in her published work. I had a textbook that was in its 3rd reprint when along came a young student (aka smarty pants) who wrote to my publisher to point out an error, and it was an obvious one—one that escaped the keen eye of editor, writer, proof-reader, etc. How could this happen? In my first novel, the errors kept creeping out of the pages; proof that I was a lousy writer? No matter how hard I tried, the errors were there and my flame-thrower spell checker never seemed to pick them up. When all seemed well, my American spelling lapsed into English spelling; a tense changed within a paragraph, etc. Why all these mistakes? Because, writers, like other humans, are fallible. We get tired. We get over our draft revisions and we long to be rid of the manuscript. My advice to those who find errors? Tell us, but then hide under the bed-covers before we find you and hit you over the head with our revised edition :-).

Author or Writer?

“I have a charming relative who is an angry young littĂ©rateur of renown. He is maddened by the fact that more people read my books than his. Not long ago we had semi-friendly words on the subject and I tried to cool his boiling ego by saying that his artistic purpose was far, far higher than mine. He was engaged in “The Shakespeare Stakes.” The target of his books was the head and, to some extent at least, the heart. The target of my books, I said, lay somewhere between the solar plexus and, well, the upper thigh. These self-deprecatory remarks did nothing to mollify him and finally, with some impatience and perhaps with something of an ironical glint in my eye, I asked him how he described himself on his passport. “I bet you call yourself an Author,” I said. He agreed, with a shade of reluctance, perhaps because he scented sarcasm on the way. “Just so,” I said. “Well, I describe myself as a Writer. There are authors and artists, and then again there are writers and painters.”

This rather spiteful jibe, which forced him, most unwillingly, into the ranks of the Establishment, whilst stealing for myself the halo of a simple craftsman of the people, made the angry young man angrier than ever and I don’t now see him as often as I used to. But the point I wish to make is that if you decide to become a professional writer, you must, broadly speaking, decide whether you wish to write for fame, for pleasure or for money. I write, unashamedly, for pleasure and money.” by Ian Fleming

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