novel writing resources
Aug. 29th, 2019 09:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
emily_in_the_glassSO! I've been seized by a novel idea, which means I might even end up doing nanowrimo this year. Maybe because I'm in that rosy bubble of brooding/pre-writing, I feel such urgency about the novel, it seems to demand that I write it before someone else writes it (and ideas being about as original as an egg, I have a feeling someone else is probably writing it) and my half-complete short stories hardly hold my interest.
In this golden age of the internet I've stumbled on some novel writing gems.
The IWP Storied Women MOOC is teaching me (almost) everything I want to write in this novel. Lesson Two, on Desire and Point of View, is pure gold.
Tim Clare's Couch to 80K podcast has also been a surprising delight. I was skeptical, and I'm only a few days in, and I'm not listening to them regularly but rather two in a row some days and some days not at all, but I like it. It's surprisingly digestible.
As a crutch I have a copy of Alan Watt's The 90 Day Novel open. I think Clare's podcast is superior, both in production quality and his ability to tap your imagination (Watts' prompts are a bit too on the nose and formulaic) but I am a big fan of all the crutches.
Jeff VanderMeer's Wonderbook is also a pleasant perusal. It doesn't stir my imagination on the same level as the more artful/high-brow Iowa lectures, but it is full of imagination and I appreciate this imaginativeness to what's been passed down as golden rules: beginnings and middles and ends and so forth. Having been raised on Freytag's pyramid in grade 4, the first time I heard the 'a story has a beginning, middle, and end' axiom I said, an earthworm has a beginning, middle, and end. Is it a story? And that seems to be the spirit of Wonderbook.
In this golden age of the internet I've stumbled on some novel writing gems.
The IWP Storied Women MOOC is teaching me (almost) everything I want to write in this novel. Lesson Two, on Desire and Point of View, is pure gold.
Tim Clare's Couch to 80K podcast has also been a surprising delight. I was skeptical, and I'm only a few days in, and I'm not listening to them regularly but rather two in a row some days and some days not at all, but I like it. It's surprisingly digestible.
As a crutch I have a copy of Alan Watt's The 90 Day Novel open. I think Clare's podcast is superior, both in production quality and his ability to tap your imagination (Watts' prompts are a bit too on the nose and formulaic) but I am a big fan of all the crutches.
Jeff VanderMeer's Wonderbook is also a pleasant perusal. It doesn't stir my imagination on the same level as the more artful/high-brow Iowa lectures, but it is full of imagination and I appreciate this imaginativeness to what's been passed down as golden rules: beginnings and middles and ends and so forth. Having been raised on Freytag's pyramid in grade 4, the first time I heard the 'a story has a beginning, middle, and end' axiom I said, an earthworm has a beginning, middle, and end. Is it a story? And that seems to be the spirit of Wonderbook.
no subject
Date: 2019-09-02 12:07 am (UTC)Good luck with your novel idea!!