In the Beginning: Starting to Write a Novel

January 3, 2008 — Pat Bertram

I finished writing my fourth novel several months ago, and I feel as if I should be starting another one. After all, a writer writes, right?

I have a synopsis and a great hook, but I just can’t get into the story. I don’t know who my characters are or why anyone, including me, should like them. I am bored by the minutiae of their ordinary lives and I want to jump right into the extraordinary times that are coming, but I need the preamble to set up the story. I suppose I could start with the last chapter as Margaret Mitchell did for Gone With the Wind, and work my way toward the beginning, but my linear mind would rebel. Or I could start with a violent scene to get my adrenaline going. Books that start with violence sell better than ones that begin more passively, anyway.

I tell myself that, good or bad, I should just get the story down on paper and worry about rewriting later. Then I remember that it’s hard for me to find any words, so they need to be good.

Starting to write a novel is always difficult, even for professionals like Mary Higgins Clark who have been writing for decades. She admitted in an interview that it never gets easier. But still she writes.

Perhaps if I were writing for publication as she does, I would be motivated. There is nothing like the threat of having to return an advance to keep a writer churning out the words. I am not writing for publication yet, and I already have four unpublished novels packed away in the dusty reaches of my computer. Adding another seems pathetic.

So what’s the alternative? Blogging. It satisfies my writing urge, the posts are short and don’t require a big commitment of my time, and I don’t need to create interesting characters.

Characters are the key to a good beginning. Once you know who they are and what they want, they can help drive the story. But the only way to learn who they are and what they want is to write them. It’s a vicious circle.

For now, I’ll stick to blogging.

Posted in blogging, life, writing. Tags: , , , , , . 3 Comments »

Scarlett by any other name would have been sweet.

October 10, 2007 — Pat Bertram

Scarlett O’Hara was originally called Pansy. If Margaret Mitchell had kept that name, would her epic novel ever have become so popular? I doubt it. A Pansy would be sweet and biddable with rare moments of stubbornness, but she could never be as strong-willed as Scarlett, and she would never have caught and kept the attention of such a worldly man as Rhett.

Unlike women characters, men tend not to have exotic names. They usually have common, clipped names, which work well enough in most cases, but what if Rhett had been called Jack or Clint or even Brad? Millions of women would probably still have fallen in love with him, but they certainly would not have found him so intriguing.

Clothes may make the man and woman, but their names (in fiction, anyway) define them.

Though Scarlett fits the name of the character in Gone With the Wind, it could not be the name of a medieval heroine. In those days, almost all girls were named Mary, with Elizabeth coming in a distant second.

I suppose if Gone With the Wind were written in the 1980s, Scarlett’s name would have been Heather. Odd to think that in another forty years, youth will scorn that name as being old-fashioned, fit only for elderly women, much like Effie is today. (I shudder to think how many babies being born right now are being named Britney, Lindsay, or Paris.)

But I digress. The point I’m trying to make is that names matter and should be chosen wisely. A book may not be rejected because of a character’s name, but why take the chance?

Posted in books, fiction, writing. Tags: , , , . Leave a Comment »