Friday, January 06, 2012

Writing a Novel

My chief focus over coming weeks, here and at my other blogs, will be thinking about and discussing the art of the novel. I'm writing a novel-- resuming one I began a year ago. I've written many "mini-novels" (see Crime City USA). I have a good sense of form. Now I intend to achieve the genuine article. I've studied the failings of literary and popular novels both, and hope to overcome them. My task is to write something good.

For this topic, I'm reopening Comments. I'll ask first, if anyone's interested-- and has done some thinking about the matter, "What makes a great novel?"

http://www.americanpoplit.blogspot.com/

http://www.blitzreview.blogspot.com/

1 comment:

BradyDale said...

Jane Smile has a book called 13 ways of thinking of the novel. Might be worth a look.

I know a big part of a novel for me is this feeling at that end that I have come a long way. If I don't feel, at the end of the book, like a considerable landscape has been traveled (including emotional landscape or psychic landscape), then it sorta fails. To me.

Ground needs to be covered. A summit needs to be climbed. And I need to FEEL it.

Eat The Babies!