Writer's Blog - No Title Comes to Mind

Its Thursday. That sounds like the beginning to an even worse song about a day in the week. With that sentence I jump on the bandwagon of bashing Rebecca Black. Perhaps this is just a shameless way to get more hits on this site - but to be honest its just what occurred to me when I started writing this post. Basically I'm surprised at myself for actually keeping up with blog posts as I intended.

The other day I submitted a story for a competition. The competition is for Writing Magazine. This took some time as the upload didn't work. The problem was my story had a question mark in the title and for some reason that wasn't allowed! Anyway it is now submitted.

Tomorrow I will get my results for university. The funny thing is that I only found out about this thanks to Facebook - I don't think I've received official notification from the uni.

Anyway on to Writing a Novel.




As you'll remember from the previous two posts I was discussing the eight point story arc. As I believe I mentioned it is important that the arc is not the only thing used to bring out the story. Watts states 'I find [the 8 point story arc) most useful as a checklist against which to measure a work in progress.' (p38)

So when you embark on your novel keep this in mind. Also a novel doesn't need to have one protagonist - it might have many. The eight point arc might be required for all characters.

I've discussed this section of the book in quite a lot of detail. This chapter finishes with a couple of exercises to try. It has lists of character, object and setting. From these three it suggests that a story can be formed. Since I am already working on two novels, plus short stories, I don't want to start yet another. If you want plots for your story a google search of plot generator should get you started. I particularly like Seventh Sanctum- it has many generators for stories.

Happy writing.

The next chapter of Writing a Novel is on Sub Plots and Symbolism. I'll begin working on that post now. I will either set it to come out in a few days or failing that it will be on Tuesday.