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    Reading To Write, a Novel Way to Write a Novel
    Reading To Write, a Novel Way to Write a Novel
    Reading To Write, a Novel Way to Write a Novel
    Ebook87 pages1 hour

    Reading To Write, a Novel Way to Write a Novel

    By Bill Johnson

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    About this ebook

    In Reading To Write, a Novel Way to Write a Novel, Bill Johnson uses detailed reviews of the opening pages of popular novels to guide new writers to a deeper understanding of storytelling.
    The novels explored in this workbook include Catherine Hyde Ryan's Funeral for Horses, excerpts from Catcher in the Rye, Harlan Coben's Tell No One, The Tin Drum, The Bell Jar, and Lady Chatterly's Lover.
    Learn to write a novel by reading popular novels!

    Bill has taught these principle in writing workshops around the United States.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBill Johnson
    Release dateJan 3, 2015
    ISBN9780967393292
    Reading To Write, a Novel Way to Write a Novel
    Author

    Bill Johnson

    Bill Johnson has practiced meditation techniques including Kriya Yoga. He is the author of the writing workbook, A Story is a Promise.

    Read more from Bill Johnson

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      It gave useful ideas on how to start a novel supported by in depth analysis

    Book preview

    Reading To Write, a Novel Way to Write a Novel - Bill Johnson

    Reading to Write

    a novel approach to novel writing

    by Bill Johnson

    Copyright © 2015 by Bill Johnson. All rights reserved.

    Published by

    Blue Haven Publishing

    Willamette Writers C.S. Whitcomb House

    2108 Buck St

    West Linn, OR 97068

    Book Design: Bill Johnson

    Cover: Nancy Hill

    ISBN: 978-0-9673932-8-0 (for print version)

    Distributed by Smashwords

    Dedication

    This book is dedicated to Nancy Hill, who has provided me many wonderful,

    beautiful book covers.

    Table of Contents

    Reading to Write

    Writing a Novel with a Stuck Main Character

    Writing the Mysterious

    Beginning a Novel with a Wounded Main Character

    Writing a Puzzle Piece

    Setting a Story Into Motion

    Unfolding a Story from a First Sentence

    Writing the Fantasy Hook

    Starting at the Beginning in the Middle

    Taking Steps -- Setting a Story Into Motion

    Creating an Alien if Familiar World

    Magic Spells

    The Bell Jar

    LadyChatterlysLover

    The Outsider

    The Tin Drum

    A Series of Unfortunate Events

    Funeral for Horses

    Tell No One

    Catcher in the Rye

    Harry Potter

    Conclusion

    Reading to Write

    a novel approach to novel writing

    In my writing workbook A Story is a Promise, I teach the mechanics of how to tell a story. The foundation of that process is that a story creates movement and the movement transports the audience. That is the intent of the storyteller, to transport his or her audience.

    When I work with struggling writers, I find a different intent. Their intent is often to introduce their characters and their lives, create descriptions of places and circumstance, and introduce the events that will set up a plot. Their intent is not to start their story until all that is done. Their novels begin 25-40 pages in.

    Put simply, if from its first page a story isn’t going somewhere, the experience is visceral to a reader. They might not know why this story vehicle has four flat tires and no engine, but they know it’s not going anywhere anytime soon.

    Some struggling writers have a different problem. They’ve made their novel’s main character an extension of themselves. This allows the authors to process their feelings or re-imagine a different life via the situations they place their main character in to. The intent here is to transport the author, not an audience. The tip off to personal storytelling is that a novel’s main character is diffuse, and the minor characters are more interesting and active, and more clearly dramatically defined.

    Typical main characters in personal storytelling are characters who are emotionally numb, stuck, unacknowledged, or too wounded to act.

    In workshops, when authors insist they are doing what these successful authors are, I will read the opening sentences of the author’s novel. After each sentence I stop and ask those attending the workshop, what is this a novel about? What does the main character want? Unlike popular novels that often accomplish that in an opening paragraph or first page, I can get pages into a novel with no one in the workshop having any idea what it’s about or what the main character wants.

    The purpose of the reviews of popular novels collected here is to teach new and struggling author to understand what these successful authors are doing that transported an audience. How they set a story into motion on the first page. How they develop dynamic, active main characters.

    These essays are meant to help those who can’t see, to see. To help those who can’t hear, to hear. To help those who lack understanding, to understand.

    Writing a Novel With a Stuck Main Character

    Notes on the Structure of The Kite Runner

    One of the character types I come across in novel manuscripts is the 'stuck' main character. Typically, a stuck main character is dragged through a novel by minor characters who act with great determination to accomplish X, which is some clearly defined goal, while the main character is too stuck to act. The main character becomes reactive and reflective, while the minor characters act with power, purpose and feeling -- often anger or a desire for vengeance -- to achieve some goal no matter the obstacles. This makes the minor characters more interesting than a main character who is diffuse.

    This review shows how a well-told, popular novel with a stuck main character can be dramatically defined and interesting.

    The opening line of The Kite Runner, 'I became what I am today at the age of twelve, on a frigid overcast day in the winter of 1975.'

    Here, the author, Khaled Hosseini, informs his readers that his main character is stuck. This opening raises the question, can the main character of The Kite Runner become unstuck? Getting to the answer to that question will take the entire novel. Since this is what this novel is about, this opening line suggests the promise of this story.

    The author continues,

    'I remember the precise moment, crouching behind a crumbling mud wall, peeking into the alley near the frozen creek.'

    It will take the author several chapters to get to an answer to the question, what happened in the alley? Why did it have such a powerful impact on the narrator? Readers are being drawn forward to answers.

    Continuing,

    'Looking back now, I realize I have been peeking into that deserted alley for the last twenty-six years.'

    The author is creating story movement by raising question that draw readers forward – transporting readers -- even while the story's main character is emotionally stuck.

    When an old family character calls in the present, the narrator relates, 'I knew it wasn't just Rahim Khan on the line. It was my past of unatoned sin.' The narrator also relates something that Rahim said during the call, 'There is a way to be good again.'

    What this suggests

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