Day One - Preparing for the Journey

Before starting out on the journey of your first novel, you need to decide on a plan of attack.

There are an infinite number of ways to go about writing a novel, but some are more effective than others. Over the next few posts, I'll be discussing methods for novel writing that are suggested by three published writers: Randy Ingermanson, Michael A. Stackpole, and Stephen King.

Stephen King is by far the most famous (an most prolific) of the three, and really needs no introduction. I will be discussing his views of writing a novel as presented in his book On Writing: A Memoir on the Craft.

Randy Ingermanson is often better known as "The Snowflake Guy" (for a reason that will become obvious when I talk about his method for writing novels) or as "America's Mad Professor of Fiction Writing" (because of personality and his Berkley physicist background). He's published a number of novels, won several awards for his writing, and has his own website to help pre-published writers grow into published writers. You can find him at his Advanced Fiction Writing webpage, where he has a number of free articles on writing, a free writing E-zine, a writing blog, and a large number of other free or reasonably priced writing aids.

Michael A. Stackpole is a New York Times best-selling science-fiction writer, and is best known for his contributions to the Star Wars universe, with novels such as Rogue Squadron and I, Jedi. You can find him at Stormwolf.Com , where he, too, has a lot of useful information for writers, including free podcasts and an inexpensive newsletter. Not only is Michael a good writer and teacher, but he also comes across as a genuinely nice guy. He has contributed to the writing community both through his own website and also by graciously providing interviews to other websites and blogs on writing.

While these three writers take slightly different approaches, there is one thing that they all have in common. They preach that conflict is the key to good writing. Conflict is to a novel what gasoline (or petrol, if you prefer) is to a car. When the gas runs out, the car stops. When the conflict runs out, the story stops.

So as you start to consider topics for your novel (and as I do the same), remember the key: seek out the conflict. Where you find conflict, you find a story.