How to Start a Novel — Starting a Novel
December 28, 2009 | Posted by How to Write a Novel How to start a novel begins by writing a short summary like those that will appear on the back when it is published. Most novelist will start writing a novel by defining its essence, a short, conscious statement of about 2-3 sentences, 5 at most, which can later be trimmed even further. With this statement or description of your novel, the novelist or novel ghostwriter can then begin asking questions and filling in the blanks.
In other words, consider the summary of your initial story to be similar to those that appear on the back of almost every published novel. The author has written a few sentences describing his or her novel, but has not told the potential reader everything, or even spoiled the ending. Nevertheless, while at the book store browsing books to read, you will have a better understanding about the novel by reading the back. At the same time, you will also have a great deal of questions, which have been focused or directed by the few sentences describing the novel. This is how to start a novel.
The answers to these questions, when applied to your own short novel summary, will help you to begin to outline your novel. Once the novel is outlined with a one to two sentence summary of each chapter, you can then go about developing each individual chapter…just fill in the blanks. It may change slightly as you start chapter one, but the main point is to begin with the basics. What parts are absolutely necessary and essential to your novel? Complete these parts first. Then, as you reread each of these parts once the rough draft of your novel has been written, you will in all likelihood have many additional ideas and determine additional parts and scenes that will strengthen your novel.
Knowing how to start a novel can begin by writing a short, novel summary like those that would appear on the back of the novel once it has been published. With this succinct, yet general few sentences or a paragraph, beginning novelists can act as a potential reader, whose mind will naturally begin to form questions about the summary. These questions — who, what, when, where, how, why — are applied to the little bit that is revealed with the summary on the back of the book.
It is important that your novel answer all the main questions your readers will have. When you start a novel, first write these questions as they relate to the brief summary. How you answer these question will be the creative part of your novel. How and by which characters these answers are told is the creative part of your novel, which can be further developed once you have finished how to start a novel.
Categories: How to Start a Novel | 
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