#8 - A Novel in a Year
Spotting gaps, plot, and the inner critic
This is my monthly digest for the exercises that Louise Doughty sets out in her book ‘A Novel in a Year’.
If you are interested in reading what got me started on this year-long creative writing odyssey, here’s a link to my first ANIAY post in January:
For newer readers, this post is a little different to the other things that I share at TBOI. These posts help keep me accountable and also act as a place to log my progress. If you couldn’t care less about reading these, I will not be offended!
Week 29
Doughty asks you to complete the final ‘character-development’ exercise, where you write a paragraph about what your central character looks like.
They might gaze into a mirror. They might look at a photo of themselves. Or the piece might be written from the point of view of someone else entirely, another character in the novel giving us his or her perspective.
I have always found describing central characters difficult as I am worried that I will make things too obvious. So any advice from fellow fiction writers would be welcomed!
I am currently rereading Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout and I did come across this wonderful character description:
The boy was said to be a cousin of Kathleen Burnham and was up from New Hampshire, working at the sawmill, though he was no bigger, and looked no older than an adolescent sugar maple. But his eyes behind the black-framed glasses were easy, his body was easy.
Week 30
Doughty begins by congratulating you on making this far, and having completed Phase 2. She adds:
You probably haven’t written as much as you would have liked to. Does that matter? No. Word counts are there to aspire to, like New Year resolutions.
No matter however many words you have written, Doughty says that hopefully you will have a ‘body of material’ - perhaps some chapters, and a few scenes here and there.
That is exactly what my mess of a Word document looks like. A jumbled collection of paragraphs in no coherent order interspersed with half-finished sentences. It would be easy to feel a bit dispirited at this stage and wonder - where is the story going? What am I trying to say? (So the same as when I often start writing something for this newsletter).
But Doughty reassures you that this is the exciting part. She advises you to print out the scenes and your notes and then put them in rough chronological order. Crucially, doing this helps you to spot gaps.
I don’t have easy access to a printer, so instead I decided to use flash-cards and write a brief overview of what scenes I have written and put these in order.
Doughty also encourages you to allow yourself a moment of pleasure.
Here, before you, is your novel.
And now the hard(er) work begins.
Week 31
Without realising it all the material that you have gathered and the scenes that you have written have helped you to create a plot:
… at its most basic level, it is no more than a matter of you the novelist deciding that this will happen, then this, then that… and if it doesn’t work that way then you will change it.
Doughty stresses that it is very hard to think up of a plot in isolation, and therefore putting words down on the page can help you to begin to flesh out what your story is about.
The task for week 29 involved writing a description for your central character. Doughty says that the best examples of this are economical with the details and can seamlessly advance the story. So for this week, Doughty asks you to do the following:
Return to the material from week 30
Pick a gap
Write a brief description about something e.g., the weather
But consider how this is relevant for the story
Week 32
It’s the final chapter for this month’s ANIAY digest, and Doughty reminds you that you have been at this for 32 weeks! When I look at that number, I am a bit taken aback.
32 weeks - really? That means that we are 20 weeks away from the end of the year. Gulp.
Then a voice pops up, ‘Ah, but you’ve hardly written anything…’
And there it is as if on cue, please welcome back my inner critic!
(I have given my inner critic a name, which I won’t share here just in case I have any readers also going by the same name.)
At this stage, Doughty also recommends taking some time out if you can. Although idea of the exercises in ANIAY is that you complete them in one year, writing a novel is a whole different beast.
In an ideal world, I would encourage you to continue writing loosely and chaotically for the rest of this year, take a six-month break, and only then go back to your messy first draft…
If taking a longer break is not possible, a choice that you don’t want to make, or you are simply uncomfortable with putting your brain and work on ice, Doughty suggests going for lots of walks, reading, visit art galleries, paint the bathroom, anything that will take your mind off the the project.
While you are on your break, you may also come across answers to some of your novel-related questions in the most unexpected places.
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Take care,
Sarah
Fantastic, Sarah! It's so good that you're getting to know your characters as well as you can. The better you know them and their motivations, the easier the writing will be. I find this novel-writing business such an act of faith in the process. I can plan, plan, plan, but some pieces just don't reveal themselves until they're ready. I spent about 6 months planning and thinking before I jumped into any form of a manuscript, and it still surprises me every day. Keep going!