BEGINNING A NOVEL by Hal E. Daniels A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of The College of Liberal Arts in Partial FulfiJlment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in Teaching Florida Atlantic University Boca Raton, Florida August 2002 Copyright by Hal E. Daniels 2002 11 BEGINNING A NOVEL by Hal E. Daniels This thesis was prepared under the direction of the candidate's thesis advisor, Dr. John Childrey, College of Liberal Arts, and has been approved by the members ofhis supervisory committee. It was submitted to the faculty of The College of Liberal Arts and was accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Teaching. SUPERVISORY COMMITTEE: T~ST J~C_ (~ Vice Provost Date lll ABSTRACT Author: Hal E. Daniels Title: Beginning a Novel Institution: Florida Atlantic University Thesis Advisor: Dr. John Childrey Degree: Master of Arts in Teaching Year: 2002 Writing a novel is a formidable task. The average 300-page novel must contain a beginning, middle and end and is comparable to the structure of the movie screenplay. The latter comprises a first act in which characters and their situation are "set up;" a second act, which reveals the conflicts of the characters; and a third act, in which the situation and conflicts are resolved. The author, a community college writing teacher, recommends that his students create vivid characters and then write an outline. The outline will serve as a roadmap, guiding the students from the beginning of their novels (the set up) to the end. Several famous authors, including Stephen King and Elmore Leonard, insist they do not use outlines. Rather, they create their characters and project the novel to its logical conclusion, according to the parameters of character. However, screenwriting guru Syd Field disagrees. Field believes an outline, written on a paradigm diagram, will keep the storyline on course and result in a more satisfying ending. The author agrees with Field. lV TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter 1, Beginning a Novel .... ..... ... .. ... ............... ............ 1 Chapter 2, The Beginning ofT & T ................ ... ............. .. ... 13 Chapter 3, Problems, Problems .... ... .. .. ........... ... ... ........ ... .. .. 33 Chapter 4, Teaching the Beginning of an Original Novel ............. 40 Notes .. .. ... ............ .. .................... ... ........................ ... .. 54 Works Cited .................................................................. 55 v Chapter 1 Beginning a Novel You love to write. You've published a short story in some obscure on-line literary journal. You covered the police beat (or city hall) for the Podunk Times-Gazette when you were younger. You've studied creative writing. Now you want to tackle the Mount Everest of creative writing assignments. You want to write a novel. If you think writing a novel will be as simple as that story you wrote about the bank robbery or that short story you published, think again. The average screenplay comprises 90 pages for a comedy and 120 for a drama. A short fictional piece might contain 30 pages. The average novel keeps going and going and going ... until you've wiped out an entire rain forest for approximately 300 pages. Three hundred pages! Where on earth will you find 300 absorbing pages? Believe it or not, the words you need are in a good dictionary and the plan is in your head, if you know what you are doing. With a good plan, you can keep your characters in line and your readers committed to your novel. Getting that plan out of your head and onto a piece of paper is what this essay is about. Every effective piece of creative writing must contain a beginning, a middle and an end. The beginning (or first act) of your story is the foundation of the entire novel. If the beginning, the first three or four chapters, does not set up the balance of the story, nothing will make sense to your readers. What's worse, you'll never sell the novel because agents and publishers are readers, too. If the readers don't like your characters, they won't get past page five (if you're 1 lucky). If you are unlucky, they won't get past page two. If the readers don't understand what your characters want to accomplish, they won't want to read your novel. If the readers don't understand how difficult and challenging it will be for your hero to accomplish his or her objective, they won't want to read your novel. So, how do you write the beginning of your novel? Many famous authors will tell you to begin with three-dimensional characters. Create two or more memorable characters, give them a situation, and the rest is history, they say. But is it really that simple? I don't think so. Let's suppose you want to drive your five-year old Ford or Toyota from South Florida to Los Angeles. You figure you've flown to Los Angeles once before and you've seen Rainman in the movies and those characters made it by car to Los Angeles, and one of them was autistic! If they can do it, so can you. And you don't need a roadmap. Or do you? So you're driving along, and you decide you want to take a side trip to Dallas. You follow the signs and you start driving north from Interstate 1O ... and you get lost. What's worse, your old clunker is starting to make strange noises. You break down in Nacodoches. Ifyou had a map, you would have known that Dallas is 224 miles from Houston, and not worth the time and expense. Your trip is over because you didn't know where you were going (and you forgot to fix your car). An outline of your novel is like a roadmap. If you have an outline, you will not get lost. You will not waste time. You will know where to start, where to go, where to finish. Sure, you will probably make a few short side trips along the way, but you 2 will know at all times where you are going. And that is why I teach beginning writers to create vivid characters and then write an outline. Novels are like screenplays in that both contain a first, second and third act. In the beginning (or first act), the author sets up his or her story. He or she introduces the protagonist(s) and the antagonist(s)- the hero and the villain. However, the writer must do more than merely describe the protagonist to us. It is not enough to know that Huck was twelve years old and had freckles. It is better to know that Huck "could sit up as late as he pleased; he was always the first boy that went barefoot in the spring and the last to resume leather in the fall; he never had to wash, nor put on clean clothes; he could swear wonderfully. In a word, everything that goes to make life precious, that boy had." Now that's descriptive writing, and that's how Mark Twain introduces Huck Finn to us in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. (Of course, we meet the rascal again in The Adventures ofHuckleberry Finn) In the beginning of the novel (or first act of the screenplay), the author must tell the readers what it is the protagonist wants more than anything else. We must learn that the old fisherman wants that giant marlin more than anything else. We must know that Atticus Finch wants to defend Tom Robinson from a false charge of rape because the old lawyer couldn't live with himself if he didn't. Stephen Crane puts his readers inside the mind of a young boy caught in the maelstrom of the Civil War. What does Henry Fleming want? He wants to be a war hero, but he has doubts. Will he skedaddle like a coward or fight like a hero? Will he survive the fury of war? 3 Finally, the author must let us know early on - in the beginning - what forces are conspiring to stop the hero from achieving his or her goals. A school of hungry sharks wants that marlin, too. Atticus Finch and Tom Robinson live in Depression- era Alabama, and Tom is black. All white juries in Alabama, circa 1935, didn't put too much stock in black defendants and their lawyers, regardless of the facts. Henry Fleming may have wanted a medal for valor, but early in the war those Rebels were a killing machine, and many a Yankee was mowed down. Advice from Authors Many authors instruct young writers to begin planning their novels by creating three-dimensional characters they feel they know. Often, these characters are composites of familiar people. Anne Lamott, author of Crooked Little Heart and Hard Laughter, says: "Plot grows out of character. If you focus on who the people in your story are, if you sit and write about two people you know and are getting to know better day by day, I something is bound to happen." Stephen King, author of more than thirty novels, starts with a situation. In his book, On Writing, published in 2000, King notes: The situation comes first. The characters - always flat and unfeatured, to begin with- come next. Once these things are fixed in my mind, I begin to narrate. I often have an idea of what the outcome may be, but I have never demanded of a set of characters that they do things my way. On the contrary, I want them to do things their way. In some instances, the outcome is what I visualized. In most, however, it's something I never expected.