In Which the Author Asks His Readers To Do His Work For Him

[snurri]

So, since October I've been helping out with the Monthly Writing Challenges for novelists on the Odyssey email list. (It's a list for alumni, so, you know, if you're not one I can't help you get on it.) There are a couple of guys doing one for short story writers, which overall seems to me more amenable to monthly challenges, but it's not the job I took. Anyway, five months in I'm already having trouble coming up with new ones. I've suggested things like, "Rewrite a crucial scene in your novel without using any sight description" or "Who does your main character spend the holidays with (and if you're writing about a created world, what are those holidays?)" I also proposed that everyone working on a novel put themselves on a deadline and figure out what sort of monthly/weekly progress would be necessary for that.

In the beginning it was easy, but now that it's hard I'm doing the smart thing and asking other people to think up stuff for me. There's a bunch of talented writers on this list, many of whom have written or are writing novels. Have you got any ideas for me? What sorts of things do you wish someone had told you before you started writing novels? What things have you learned in doing so? Help?

Comments

[nihilistic-kid.livejournal.com]

"Write about fucking and bacon."

[snurri.livejournal.com]

Raw or sizzling?

[tanaise.livejournal.com]

The only ones I can think of are (not surprisingly) evil, and include things like, "Kill off a character in your novel (be creative). Who would miss them? Why?" :)

[snurri.livejournal.com]

There may be something in there, actually . . . although I guess I won't demand that they kill someone, necessarily.

[tanaise.livejournal.com]

well, technically they could resurrect them once they'd figured out why they were important.

I think I hang out with Jodi too much, who celebrated the start of a revision by killing off people who had only been injured in the first draft.

[snurri.livejournal.com]

You have some bloodthirsty friends . . .

[stephanieburgis.livejournal.com]

Think of the worst possible thing that could happen to your character right now...the single event that would be the most awkward and lead to absolutely the most trouble...and do it. Now!

This is pretty much what gets me through whole novels...

[snurri.livejournal.com]

Ooh, I like that! Thanks!

[mkhobson.livejournal.com]

You know, everyone says "if things get stalled, send in a man with a gun."

I say, if things get stalled, make two characters who hate each other have sex.

I just don't like guns, you see.

M

[snurri.livejournal.com]

Heh. Yeah, me neither, although I have used them.

[haddayr.livejournal.com]

Okay obviously I'm not a novelist so what do I know?

But one of my assignments would be: have an unlikely and seemingly peripheral character narrate a chapter.

Sometimes you learn interesting things, or see things from a new point of view, and also it's fun to read when people do that. And stuff.

[snurri.livejournal.com]

That's a good idea, actually. So I guess you know something :-P

[jamiam.livejournal.com]

Flip the gender and/or sexuality of your protagonist and/or his/her love interest. What do you have to change to make the plot still work?

Flip everybody back. Now that you've done that, do you want to keep any of the changes you had to make to people's actions/conversation/professions?

[snurri.livejournal.com]

Ooh. I like that a lot!

[jamiam.livejournal.com]

I did it in the middle of writing my novella-thing because I'm an indecisive, fidgety sort of person. And all of sudden I was catching all these spots where I was stereotyping according to gender norms... the resulting character is a lot more 3d.

[scottjanssens.livejournal.com]

I haven't really started a novel yet, so now's your time to tell me what I will have wished somebody had told me.

[tanaise.livejournal.com]

Don't start!