It ’s National Novel - Writing Month , when the world ’s cool people plunge head - first into craft a novel from scratch . But how can you tell if your brilliant novel estimate is really just a short level that ’s engender too crowing for its britches ?
The truth , of course , is that there ’s no such affair as a “ novel idea ” or a “ short story idea . ” It all depends on performance , and reasonably much any idea can become a novel or a light story , depending on how you plow it . At the same time , it ’s also truthful that :
1 ) Some ideas are easier to plough into a whole novel than others .
2 ) You might discover that a special storyline just does n’t work as a novel for you in particular , even if it might have breed a novel for someone else . ( Or it ’s not a novel - desirable idea for the writer you are today , but it might turn into one ten years from now . )
So how before you neutralize cute days of your all - too - short month on an unfeasible idea — and remember that , just to mock the valetudinarianism of your ambitiousness , November only has 30 days instead of 31 — here are some nosology that you could apply to your novel in progress , to see if it ’s really produce the novelistic stuff .
I ’ve written my bonny share of abortive novel that turned into passably good shortsighted stories . This in reality is n’t a speculative way to come up with a well short story , because after you sift through all the random skank and get to the one nifty idea that support a few thousand row of effervescent prose . Some of my favourite little stories ( of mine ) start out out that way . But it ’s not so bang-up if you ’re trying to win the approval of the NaNoWriMo idol .
At the same time , every fail novel fails in its own way , and that include novel that fail because they ’re honorable off being short floor . So there are no hard - and - libertine rules , or foolproof tests , for identifying this syndrome too soon . The best I can volunteer is a few tinge . So here are some question you may try asking :
Does your plot of ground add itself to complication ? you’re able to insert complication into any game , really , but some plots are more naturally open to twists and turns than others — and if you ’re planning on just having a lot of steering wheel - spinning , “ and then they get lose or taken prisoner a whole bunch , ” complications that do n’t really build your characters at all , then possibly it ’s time to rethink . I mean , you do n’t have to outline a novel in advance — some masses do , some do n’t — but if you ca n’t see how this is buy the farm to get from “ we have a trouble ” to “ we have a solvent , ” other than in a straight line — or if the resolution at the end of the novel is obvious on page three — then peradventure you do n’t have a novel here . Hint : A “ shaggy pawl ” tale does n’t always make for a great novel , unless you’re able to make it really queer or fascinating .
Just how episodic is this ? And are the episode thing that really arrive together into one news report , or just random consequence that happen to some of the same the great unwashed ? Do your episode actually ramp up the characters , so that the reader learn a progression in their competence or their attitude , or do you just contrive on lurching from one upshot to the next ?
Is your protagonist someone with a past tense ? And a futurity ? A heap cod on your principal grapheme here — and not to be rude to your protagonist , but some chief characters are just naturally inadequate fiction heroes . you may always bring more detail and more depth to your admirer to try on and flesh him / her out , but sometimes what ’s awesome about a character reference is just how she or he confronts one moment in his / her animation . So it ’s never a bad idea to recollect about your protag , and precisely what secrets from their past you may delve into , and what folly wait them in the future . Often , the expert novel protagonists have something moderately major befall to them at the start of the tarradiddle — like Richard Kadrey ’s Sandman Slim being trapped in Inferno for a decade and in conclusion crawling out , or Seanan McGuire ’s October Daye being turned into a fish for years before finally regaining her human form . It ’s the sort of backstory that leaves lots of material to work out through — and people to face .
For that thing , is your protagnonist really our protagonist ? Or is this just the somebody you think ought to be the admirer of a novel ? perchance there ’s someone hang around in the backdrop who ’s right smart more enchanting , but just does n’t have as much of what you regard to be a refreshing protagonist ’s attribute . Maybe your ostensive protagonist is a more traditional submarine sandwich but just does n’t have your full attention .
Are you really only concerned in one corner ? Is there one piece of the picture that really interests you , but you ’re coerce yourself to branch out your focus to include a good deal of other stuff ? in earnest , be honest . Sometimes there ’s one part of the narrative that really stands out and feels graphic and fascinating , whereas the relief of it is sort of blurry and generic , and you ’re hoping that all the poppycock where your hero gets lost in the wild will snap into focus once you ’ve started write it . This is probably the boastful one — if your epically sprawl fib only has one shining moment , or one strand , that really makes you excited to write it , then that ’s probably a short story — at least for now .
Is this all just an self-justification for worldbuilding ? Are you more concerned in the backdrop than the story have lieu in the foreground ? Can you spend hours geeking out about the Frost Giants and their episodic wars with the Steam Genies ? Do you have a ton of mathematical function of different places , with their ceaselessly enthralling local intrigue ? In that showcase , you never know , sometimes it ’s better to write a caboodle of shared - universe stories in which you get to dig around unlike corners of your world .
Does it feel like it might get away from you a little bit ? Because if it feels totally under dominance correctly from the showtime , that could actually be a sign that you ’re plow with something small and healthy rather than a monstrous appendage of uncontrolled storytelling . Even in the first dozen pages , if you ca n’t feel rock outcrop and weird edges drink down out of your report all over the place , then that could be a danger sign .
The bottom line , of class , is you often ca n’t tell whether something will support a novel until after you ’ve write tens of thousands of row and discovered that you either do or do not have the strength of article of faith to lead this puppy into the harbour . And the “ military posture of conviction ” thing is often a gut feeling that you do n’t get all at once , but it just pussyfoot up on you over time . Still , asking some hard questions at the start of the unconscious process might aid
At the very least , it ca n’t wound . ( And expect in head , even if your novel morphs into a short account or a set of short stories , you could always turn it back into a novel somewhere down the pipeline . )
Happy NanoWriMo , everybody !
NaNoWriMo LOLcat images viaDavid Niall Wilson , InnergeekandCheezburger .
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