Creating Your Masterpiece: A Novel Experience

By Paul Hichens

Like no other novel writing guide
Even this book has a twist!

From a trainer of writers and author of an exciting new kind of crime thriller, this book is packed with advice, examples & practical sessions and can empower you to:

- Improve your action, drama, plot, characters & more
- Enhance your writing/book (potentially dramatically)
- Complete your book (and to your satisfaction)
- Market, publish, promote and sell your book
- Overcome hurdles and avoid costly mistakes
- Save yourself lots of time (potentially years)

It’s not just a book, but a potential game-changer for ambitious authors of all genres!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Paul Hichens
• Release date: Mar 16, 2023
• ISBN: 9781915257178

Paul Hichens

I'm adventurous with an international outlook and a very unique style of writing. You'll have to read my novel Butcher Boy Blue to see what I mean, but essentially it's crime but funny and with more mystery and bigger twists - and you won't have read anything like it anywhere else.I've kept to my Northeast England roots for Butcher Boy Blue but the world is a big place and we'll see where my intriguing hero Mo lands next. His family hails from the USA and I've a French connection so maybe one of those places...In addition to writing my other passion is creating music.Feel free to check out some of my songs at http://www.paulhichens.comBooks include:Butcher Boy BlueThe One Page CV (published by Pearson Eduction)Stuff Strife, Gimme Life! (improve your job, career and work-life balance)

Book preview

Creating Your Masterpiece

- A Novel Experience

By

Paul Hichens

Creating Your Masterpiece - A Novel Experience

Published by Ardour Publishing Copyright © 2022 Paul Hichens

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except as permitted by UK copyright law. For permissions or sales, contact [e-mail]

Ardour Publishing is a trading name of e-Fervour Limited

ISBN: 978-1-915257-16-1 (print) | 978-1-915257-15-4 (eBook)

First Edition

For more information on the writing and music of Paul Hichens

visit https://paulhichens.com/

For Christèle, my partner in crime.

(Not crime fiction – though note the lack of clarification!)

Contents

Preface

Chapter 1: Tools of the trade

Chapter 2: A novel ambition

Chapter 3: Opinions

Chapter 4: Biting the bullet

Chapter 5: Scene of the crime

Chapter 6: Characters

Chapter 7: Plotting your plot and spinning your story

Chapter 8: And… action!

Chapter 9: ‘Style’

Chapter 10: Work in progress

Chapter 11: Courses, books and learning

Chapter 12: Literary permaculture

Chapter 13: Tools of the trade - revisited

Chapter 14: Investing in you and your writing

Chapter 15: ‘Show not tell’ and POV

Chapter 16: Agents, Publishers and Self-Publishing

Chapter 17: What next?

Chapter 18: Fun

Chapter 19: Resources and collaboration

Chapter 20: Final words

Preface

Honestly

There are books that imply that you can write a fantastic novel simply by following the advice given. And you can believe this if you wish. Plenty do.

A recurring theme of this book is one of honesty. And in all honesty, I believe that there is far more to creating a truly great novel than just following some advice in a book. And by this, I mean any advice book. Including this one!

You’ll never create a truly great novel without specialist knowledge. Yes, most guidebooks can advise you on key themes. And that’s a start. But then what? In addition to hundreds of hurdles, you’ll also have thousands of tricky decisions to make over the course of your novel. Unless you really understand all the key considerations (including personal ones that are often missed), and unless you are empowered to recognize/overcome pitfalls and make the best decisions for you, then you’re a bit stuffed!

Standard advice doesn’t really prepare you for all that.

Empowering you, more holistically, as a better writer, novelist and decision-maker does.

This book is aimed at helping you with exactly that.

Perspective

Another thing that this book also does is give you an alternative perspective to conventional methodology described in typical books. There is more than one way to skin a cat, and what works best for some people doesn’t work for others. So, while conventional novel-writing considerations and techniques are described and touched upon, alternatives are also proposed (and with the logic and rationale) so you can decide if they are methods you could use to your advantage too.

Why?

To give you more food for thought as well as hopefully giving you more options.

Is it just for novelists?

While it has been written primarily with novelists in mind, this book should help anyone wishing to create, promote and sell any book – not just novels or fiction.

Why read this book?

It should do one, some, or all of these things:

Save you lots of time (potentially years)

Help make your book better than it’d be otherwise (potentially dramatically better)

Help you identify and achieve your goals for your book

Improve your odds of completing your book

Improve your odds of completing your book to your satisfaction

Help you create a more marketable book

Help you to better market and promote your book

Help you avoid potentially costly mistakes

Give you new perspectives and additional options both in terms of writing and promoting your book

Help motivate you

Help you overcome (pretty much inevitable) hurdles that you’ll encounter

Help you exceed your expectations

All of these things should certainly be enough to spark your attention. (If not then why not? They are all immense plusses!). At the same time, I guess that some of you will be more absorbed with a different poser (see below).

$64,000 question

Will it turn my book into a huge success?

That’s the question most people fixate on.

The honest answer to this is that it can’t guarantee success, no book can - but it could help play a role.

Notably, ‘success’ is quite a vague term, and can be interpreted differently. For example, some people might define it as achieving $multimillion sales, whereas others may sum it up as ‘creating their own personal masterpiece’. A main aim of this book is to help authors with the latter - fulfilling their potential to create the best possible book for them – not just any old novel, but one that excites them, one that’s aligned with their goals, in sync with their ambitions, and surpasses their hopes and expectations.

Do that and it isn’t just an achievement in itself, but it is actually the starting point for success anyway (personal and/or commercial).

Improving your odds

A lot of would-be authors either don’t fulfil their potential, or they give up along the way and don’t even finish their book. However, it doesn’t have to be that way. While turning your story from an idea swimming around your head into a great book is more difficult than people realise, there are considerations that people usually don’t think about,, as well as things, methods and techniques that you can use to your advantage to significantly boost your odds of success.

We’ll examine these in due course.

It’s a long and far from straightforward journey, and you’ll come to the right conclusion for you quicker and more smoothly if you have the right (honest) information at hand to help you make better (more) informed decisions.

This book aims to help you with all that – and more.

Low-cost, no-risk investment

The very fact that you are reading this already shows that you are serious about making the grade. You have taken an important first step to help you on your journey. Hopefully, this book will convert that one step into leaps and bounds, and you’ll subsequently consider it a great no-risk investment in your writing career.

About the author

I guess I’m not a typical writer.

While I’m happy to draw from conventional methods as appropriate, I’ve always been one to explore and blaze my own trail if it’s advantageous or feels right.

This book gives insights into my novel-writing experience, and while some have described it as intriguing, enlightening and fascinating, ultimately you can judge for yourself.

While much of this book has been designed to help you greatly improve your novel, there is far more to creating, producing and marketing a popular novel than just the creative aspects. As a longstanding professional writer, successful businessman and trainer of professional writers, I’ve lots to offer from both sides of the creative and commercial conception-to-market lifecycle fence.

This isn’t a typical writing guide. And deliberately so! It’s arguably more holistic, far-reaching and eye-opening. Certainly, you won’t find much of what follows anywhere else, but if you want a bigger picture, wider perspectives and more options to use to your advantage then it’s exactly what you need.

Extra!

Oh, yes! In addition to providing lots of fresh food for thought to help you enhance your writing and maximize your book’s potential, I’ve also drawn on my business experience/contacts to give you access to additional resources that should help you further still, beyond this book - and for free I should add!

More on these later.

Practical sessions

I’ve included over 40 practical sessions in this book. You aren’t obliged to do them, but they are for your benefit, and you could end up with a much better novel/book if you do.

Real-life examples

I’m more than delighted with my end-product novel. Indeed, it has far surpassed all my expectations. However, the process was by no means plain sailing, and there were plenty of ups and downs. While there is a temptation to sweep the lows under the carpet, I think real-life warts and all examples can be very helpful for readers – as not only can they be better than the distant/theoretical alternative when it comes to explaining relevant points, but they can also add authenticity and be potentially more interesting to boot.

All novelists have lows - even household name authors. The trick is to recognize issues, face up to, and surmount the diverse impediments that you’ll almost inevitably encounter over the course of a novel. Notably, there are things you can do to help you achieve this. And while it is easier said than done, it is achievable. To help illustrate this and numerous other key points, I’ve cheekily picked on an unfortunate guinea pig to steal some real-life examples from…

…me!

And that’s just one of the reasons I’ve included real-life examples. I’ll reveal more later.

Like all novelists, I’ve made both gaffes and inspired choices along the way. It’ll help you all the more if I give you examples of both – the gaffes so you don’t make the same mistakes, and the inspired choices because it’s important to not only recognize them, but also understand just why they work for you.

The examples are intended to help you enhance your decision-making not only for your current book, but also for your future works too.

Do I regret not having all the information presented in this book before I embarked upon my own novel journey?

You bet! It would have saved me at least a year, and I’d have got to the point where I was really happy with it a lot sooner too.

Without further ado, let’s get started on the road to getting you much happier with your book too…

Chapter 1: Tools of the trade

No one is born with the complete set of tools necessary for great novel writing. For example, even those with profuse amounts of innate creative talent still need specialist know-how. Moreover, no matter how many strings you have to your bow, it’s highly unlikely that nature will have created you as the world’s first ever literary finished article. There’s always some polishing, learning, shaping or brushing up to do.

This sad fact of life can be looked at as a positive - If you’re not the finished article yet then join the club! Even the greatest writers had to start somewhere, and build on what nature bestowed upon them. Part of the trick is (A) recognizing this, and (B) doing something about it. Notably, doubts at this stage are not only natural, but are actually a blessing. The alternative is to assume (as many people do) that they already know it all. The fact that you are reading this right now indicates that you (C) haven’t fallen into that trap and (D) are being positive and proactive.

So where to start?

It’s good - and even sensible - to begin by considering the skills and traits you need, and whether or not you possess them? If you don’t possess all the right skills yet, it doesn’t mean that you can’t acquire them, but since you’ll need them at some point to produce a quality novel, it’s worthwhile contemplating such things now. At worst, it could save you years of wasted toil, at best it could help you write a much better book.

Retrospective

I didn’t make any such list myself. But I wish I had, because it would have certainly helped me.

Looking back to the time when I first embarked on my novel, if I had written such a list, I guess it would have looked something like this:

Creativity

Ability to conceive and create a good plot

Knowledge of your chosen genre

Good command of English (or the language you write in)

A good way with words (and especially in writing)

A reasonable understanding of novel structures

Some understanding of novel conventions

An understanding of key things like POV and ‘show not tell’

Awareness of how agents/publishers like things presented

In retrospect, the above is more or less all that I thought I needed when I first put pen to paper. Confident, I had all of the above in my toolbox, I believed I was good to go.

As it turned out however, there were plenty of things I hadn’t considered, and even though I did ‘go’ (and very enthusiastically), I’d have been doomed to failure if I hadn’t gained additional knowledge and drew upon other skills along the way too.

I’ll give you a fuller list (with the benefit of hindsight) in due course, but it could be helpful if we examine some of the above entries to begin with.

A reasonable understanding of novel structures

If you read novels, you should already have an idea of how they are usually structured. I say ‘usually’ because we are talking fiction, it comes from the imagination and there is nothing to prevent you from coming up with your own new format. Indeed, you could hit upon a fantastic new way of recounting your story. At the same time, there are good reasons for more conventional structures, and arguably the biggest one is that they are tried and tested to work! Not only that, but they tend to be what readers expect and publishers want.

If you are unsure about what constitutes good novel structures then reread some books that you like, and pay particular attention to, not just the story, but how the author has structured, packaged and presented things. If you can look through some books from your intended genre then all the better. I’m not suggesting that you copy the formats of other books, or try to fit your novel into some kind of template - I think both of those things are highly counterproductive , but at the very least you should get an idea of what works well for opening paragraphs and opening scenes as well as the kinds of things that novelists use to build up the tension, keep readers on edge and keep them guessing. Also, pay attention to endings. Is the ending an intriguing conclusion to what preceded it? Is it disappointing? Does it make you happy? Sad? Does it sit naturally? Did the author have to resort to an epilogue? Was it slick and natural? Does it seem clumped on? Did you like it? Why? (Or why not?) Would you have done something to make it better? If so, what?

At their base, novels often revolve around a journey from (A) the opening, to (B) the end– and hopefully with lots of interest, drama and intriguing twists and turns along the way. If you want your novel to get from A to B in the way you want it to, then a good understanding of structures is not only beneficial, but also arguably essential.

Knowledge of your chosen genre

This is one thing I underestimated. It’s not so surprising because when most people read a sci-fi, they don’t scour it analytically through a microscope, they just lap up the story and prepare to be entertained. I’d read plenty of crime thrillers before I embarked upon my own (not hundreds, but a decent amount from a variety of authors). To me, reading other books in my genre was important - and it is to some degree -but before I wrote my novel, I’d barely even scratched the surface of the genre. Yes, I was well aware that e.g., murders occurred, villains tried to cover their tracks and detectives sometimes got into scrapes trying to solve crimes. That’s all well and good, but I’d never considered for an instant that underneath all of that there were other conventions to crime writing too. Significantly, there are conventions for all other genres too – including yours.

Getting to know my genre and its conventions is one of the things I had to brush up on. You may already be au fait with conventions for your genre, but if not then that’s something you really ought to put on your ‘to do’ list.

There is more on conventions later in this book.

Creativity, good command of English and a good way with words

This pretty much goes without saying. If you aren’t creative and English isn’t your forte, then novel writing probably isn’t for you. Yes, anyone can brush up on grammar, but if your vocabulary is limited, and you have trouble expressing yourself in writing, then you’ll not only find creating novels difficult, but probably tiresome and a pain in the backside to boot!

I mention that this ‘pretty much goes without saying,’ but actually it is worth bringing up because the English and writing style of some would-be novelists isn’t quite as good as they think it is. The same goes for some people’s ability to ‘create a good plot.’ Second opinions can be useful for budding novelists in such respects. I elaborate more on this in chapter 3.

Awareness of how agents/publishers like things presented

If you are hoping to get your book published, then you should be aware of agent/publisher ‘no lists’ and how they like (A) being approached and (B) work being presented. You may scoff at this, but your brilliant manuscript may be rejected in an instant for something as seemingly trivial as the wrong spacing or font size. Again, it’s something you should brush up on if need be. (I’ll elaborate more on agents and publishers later).

Strengths and areas of weakness

Hopefully you’ll