【全英文專題】The Writing Skills of Novel / 小說寫作技巧 By LILKrake章魚 @ LILKrake章魚幻想創作之境顛倒世界 / 特務第七感 / 當殺手遇上魔法師 / 奪心嶼 / 具現王子

大概花了五個晚上其中兩個晚上共弄了十二個小時，這是外語群科中心要交的專題比賽，也算是我們的作業。在這裡附上文書檔案，另外還有簡報檔跟一鏡到底的英文講說錄影，在部落格就不貼了～

專題不同於論文它不能夠只蒐集資料，要統整、進行研究、調查、調查成果總結，需要實質上的親自研究，我與另一個組員在一開始想了二十多個題目本來要做嘻哈文化的，但經過一次次探討與老師的駁回都捨棄掉了，最後我在校車上靈光一閃，想說為何我不打自己領域的東西呢？研究過程，本人鑽研五年多，自己就是「資料」與「過程」，怎麼不打這個？ＸＤ接著很快就在導師也覺得不錯的肯定下開始打了。過程我很懶，不過等到先讓另一個組員做完簡報跟我給他的中文研究方法、動機、結論後，接著就是忙我的了，有兩天從晚上六點打到半夜十二點，打英文真的滿吃力的，不像我有中文底子寫作又這麼久，轉換與字詞的篩選上是一大挑戰，不過這次真的學到了一些，也很感謝跟我是好兄弟的澳洲外師Stuart他撥空來幫我檢查全文的文法錯誤與怪句，同樣也很感謝網路上一同奮鬥的寫小說親友團們的大力幫忙，幫助我完成很簡單的幾個小問題統計ＸＤ

183981_10150099596210636_2225795_n (親愛的史都華Stuart~)

以下是文書全文，共4800多字。因為字數關係與英文的關係，這篇小說技巧沒有講太深入只有提一些基本的注意重點，不算是很深入打出，不過要這樣子的話範圍就會更深就不好做了。

Abstract

A novel is a long narrative, normally in prose, which describes fictional characters and events, usually in the form of a sequential story.

While a more precise definition of the genre is difficult, the main elements that critics discuss are: how the narrative, and especially the plot, is constructed; the themes, settings, and characterization; how language is used; and the way that plot, character, and setting relate to reality.

How we are supposed to write a novel or a reason why we are writing it is so important. We are going to take it step by step to reach conclusions for all the questions.

Key Word: Novel, Writing skills, Writing

Table of Contents

Introduction

I.1. Motivation

Why do we want to get involved with this subject? No matter what generation it was, after “words” were created and were being used universally by humankind, everyone always had some creative thoughts in their mind to express. We always want to translate our thoughts into a story.

Yes, in the modern days there are still people around who wants to finish a simple story or a novel. Most of those people don’t know how to start it, and it is not about the great creation or some personal talent.

──The most important thing is about the “Skills”!

Right now, we are going to discuss some professional skills of “writing a novel”!

I.2. Background

In the past, we had “Three Kingdoms”, “The Water Margin” and “Dream of Red Mansion” these world renowned novels in ancient China. In the foreign countries of the past, we had ”Don Quixote”, “War and Peace”, “Pride and Prejudice”, “Oliver Twist” and ”A Tale of Two Cities” and so on. Nowadays, many novels are sold worldwide like “Harry Potter”, “The Lord of the Rings”, “Les Miserables”, “The Hunger Games” and “Twilight” in America, “The Grave Robbers’ Chronicles” Mo Yan’s book in China, and famous writer Giddens’ book in Taiwan.

We have countless world famous novels around the world, people continuously creating stories, then books, movies, stage plays popping up one after another.

There are many people around us reading novels, writing novels. It seems like it is always a part of our life. Yes, from the past to nowadays we all get involved in it, and its ramblings always seem to attract people of all ages.

I.3. Research Questions

We come to a conclusion of “Why”, “When”, “Where” and “How” of our questions:

1.Why: we need to understand why you are writing it, no matter if it is a job or a habit, and you need to know why you are writing?

2.When can we improve our writing skills?

3.What are the “writing skills of novel”?

4.How should we prepare when we are getting ready and beginning to write a novel story?

II. Literature Review

II.1. Definition

A novel is a long narrative, normally in prose, which describes fictional characters and events, usually in the form of a sequential story.

While Ian Watt in “The Rise of the Novel(1957)” suggests that the novel came into being in the early 18th century, the genre has also been described as having "a continuous and comprehensive history of about two thousand years", with historical roots in Classical Greece and Rome, medieval, early modern romance, and in the tradition of the novella. The latter, an Italian word used to describe short stories, supplied the present generic English term in the 18th century. Miguel de Cervantes, author of “Don Quixote”, is frequently cited as the first significant European novelist of the modern era.

The romance is a related long prose narrative. Walter Scott defined it as "a fictitious narrative in prose or verse; the interest of which turns upon marvelous and uncommon incidents", whereas in the novel "the events are accommodated to the ordinary train of human events and the modern state of society". However, many romances, including the historical romances of Scott, Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights and Herman Melville's Moby-Dick, are also frequently called “novels”, and Scott describes romance as a "kindred term". Romance, as defined here, should not be confused with the genre fiction love romance or romance novel.

II.2. The book selling market and related drafts

Because of all the different styles from around the world we picked London as our example because of its big market and culture.

There are many types of revision to consider once we have a draft of a novel:

This Novel Revision Chart shows the different types of revisions and helps you prioritize the revision tasks.

Revising Scenes:

III. Methods

In this project, since our goal of research is to find out the way of becoming a successful novelist or whether not to do so, we collected all kinds of information on hand. In order to get to know better about novel, we find several books about writing novels and reasons of writing it.

III.1 Personal Experience

One of our teammates has already written for more than five years. He is always doing research when writing. The right way of writing and the time of controlling when writing, all the skills of writing is basically not learning day by day or month by month but is step by step. He is the right person doing the research.

III.2 Theoretical Research

From Nicai Qing’s book “Becoming a Bestselling Writer”, we can find out that becoming a writer isn’t easy at all. We need to know that when people read a book we mostly will just look at its cover and the back. If the first five minutes of your book are not great enough normally people won’t bother finishing it. You want to impress yourself first then you will get a chance to impress others. And also is it supposed be a part of our life? Is it okay to interfere with any of our jobs?

Here, let us begin to discuss the main “4W’s” of writing a novel──Why, What, When and now.

III.3 Why?

Why we write novel? This looks like a simple question, but a lot of writers don’t know what they will write, and what are they write for?

　　Is it for the job, making money, being famous, supporting the family, or just for your passion for writing, creating a novel story and enjoying the phenomenon of how many readers get immersed in your story?

The question has no correct answer, but you must know what are you writing for?

Doing everything requires knowing the motivation and the results you want to achieve, then, you have to decide the way you choose. Every purpose has its definition and the ultimate goal, and depends on the way you use. If your way is wrong at the beginning, you just fail at the starting point, and whatever efforts you make are deviated from the right path.

III.4 When?

If you have already figured out what’s the motivation and the way you want to create some stories, let’s start to do this!

For the beginner, it is the most important thing that doing everything has to draw and study from the predecessors’ works and lead. So if you want to step into this area, you need to increase your ability of writing skills and learn more skills and details from other good novels.

You don't have to invent creative writing on your own; many have gone before you and many of those have written books. You can learn a lot by reading some of them. You can't learn how to write fiction just by reading a “how to” book. They help, but to learn how to write you must write!

After you have read a few books and started your story, you will learn where you need the most help. That's the time to look for additional “how to” books.

There is also a suggestion that you read some books in the genre of book you are thinking of writing. This will give you an idea of what others have done and what readers may expect in that genre.

Properly speaking, “When” is not a problem for you at all──When can we start? When can we learn? When can we write?When can we improve our writing skills?──If you have some passions in writing novels, you must take a lot of time to read other writers’ works and learning whatever you can learn in the story, like the story’s structure, the expressions and the behaviors’ technique of the characters.

Now everybody is often using their smart phones or ipods, we can also put some novels you like into them, or just bring some books to carry with you.

There is always be some free time in our life. Don’t waste these times, read some books enlarge your “background knowledge”, and this will help you a lot on writing.

Take your time!

Many times, we also can get some ideas from what we saw in the book and some event that just happened in our life, and these ideas can also be the themes of our creative story.

If you think you are prepared enough to start writing a story, then go!

III.5 What?

What are the “writing skills of novel”? For many people, it’s not so difficult to imagine about the details of it, but, is it really as simple as you guys are thinking? If you just want to start a freely written story, then I have no words to say. But if you want to write a “good novel story”, I can 100% say that it is totally not an easy task.

“Writing skills of novel” depends on lots of rules, details, and skills. For example, when you want to start your new story, you have to decide what kind and what terms of the story you want to choose, then, you have to carefully design the storyline and the all characters and events in it.

Everything in the story all will connect with others, whatever it is - an event, plot or a character - in a normal and a good story nothing will not appear for no reason. Everything must have its meaning to show up in this story.

So, “writing skills of novel” really involves many things.

To know what is the “writing skills of novel”?, you may learn from others story, but the better way to know it is to create and design a story from yourself, then you can find more things and the mistakes in your story one after another.

Now, we will discuss some main kind of the factor of the “writing skills of novel” by the following──”How?” .

III.6 How?

“How” is the most important thing in “writing skills of novel”. So how should we do that when we are getting ready and beginning to write a novel story? How to put and integrate your creation and idea into your story, to design a systematic and head and tail rational story? We need to handle it step by step:

III.6.1 Before the story

III.6.1.1 The motivation and the purpose

The motivation and the purpose is the main issue and gives perspective to your story.

Before you create a novel story, first you need to figure what are the motivation and the purpose of this story? The main point to you is to reflect the social affairs, world unfairness, the tragedy of your life or what?

You need to find out what is the main point you write this story, then your story will be able to have a spirit in it.

III.6.1.2 Decide theme and genre

If you have your ideas of the story’s motivation and purpose, the next thing is to decide what kind of the theme and genre you want to write down.

Nowadays, there are lots of genres and countless themes people have written to date, but on the whole, there are still some main genres like fantasy, science-fiction, time-travel, mystery, romance, horror, thriller, adventure, crime, historical and the light novel.

If your story can’t be classified to a genre, we will say that your story is like a neither fish nor fowl.

After selecting the main kind of genre, next is the theme you want to have in your story, it is also the “characteristic” of what you are talking about. “Theme” is not like the genre, it can be a choice of all forms and kinds you want to. For example, “vampire”, “hero”, “super powers”, “ghost”, “killer”, “magic”, “zombie”, “angel and devil”……these are some of the common types for most people they choose and write. If you want to be innovative and different in your own story, just unlike to others, you can think about more in your creation. Sometimes, you can even mix or change the factors of these common types, to create your novel story.

III.6.1.3 Choose the length of the story at the same time

There are three common terms of novel: short-term, middle-term and long term.

You have to think how long your story takes? Generally speaking, a short-term story is roughly about 3000 to 15000 words, and the middle-term story is roughly around 30000 to 70000, finally, the long-term story is a book of over a 70000 and may be a series and have sequels.

Each form of term has its emphasis and considerations. In a short-term story, because it’s less word count, you need to compress all the ideas into this short format, to fill the exciting plot in it. On the other hand, to the long-term story, due to its long format, you can put more things in it, and make the details more refined, but the most important thing is to conceive the details of each different part of the story. And the middle-term story is between these two.

III.6.1.4 Construct the world(background) and its details

This is one of the most important things in creating a story. You can set up the story in any way you want, the “world” can be in a reality just like our world, and can also be in a world that you design by yourself.

If the background is set up in the reality, then you must notice the logic and all kinds of details to the real world. You can create a fictional event or something, but you need to make it “logical” and “in line with reality”. You can’t just write down whatever you want, everything needs to relate with reality.

　　If the worldview is set up by yourself, like in the unknown future or a world that has some different factor in it, like magic, super ability, aliens, zombies……it is ok and there are lots of people who actually do this and have created numerous bizarre world structures of it, but the point is we still have to completely conceive all of the factors in this story, and make it line up with logic.

III.6.1.5 Detailed design the character’s personality and its details

Characters are just as important as the world structure, and the “Characteristic” especially important.

Whatever a story is like, all of the plot and events must work around the characters, and this is the most worth-seeing thing in a story. Readers don’t want to see a story that is always or often talking nonsense, they want see the exciting plot and what the characters are going to do next. To do this, details showing each of the aspects and moves of a character are very important, sometimes a good or a bad main character even can dominate the readers and put the whole story up and down.

To say the characters are the most important thing is not an exaggeration.

III.6.1.6 Separate the whole story to some plot fragments

After you have completed the concept and the factors mentioned above, you have to clearly break the whole story down to each part then do a detailed concept again. This can help you analyze and clarify your story plot so that you will not be confused by your complicated story line.

We have to think a lot about plot fragments in a story to choose the most exciting and good ones, we also need to separate and combine these story lines.

III.6.2 During the story

III.6.2.1 Start writing!

If you are done with creating your world structure, characters, story lines and other details, then start the first paragraph with a story introduction or directly write down the beginning!

III.6.2.2 The narrative

When you are writing your story, you need to carefully choose the right vocabulary and a moderate way to state the narrative.

Each word can influence the meaning of a narrative, so you must find out the best word in your mind to put into this descriptive sentence. If you have a problem and you can’t reasonably choose a word you think is better, it means you do not have enough vocabulary in your mind. The best way to improve this factor is reading more books and learning more useful words, then next time you can have several word choices in your mind.

Otherwise, learning more different words with the same meaning can also help you enrich your description, and in writing down more details of what you want to describe in this view or situation in your story plot you want to write.

A good description and a bad description will totally change the meaning and message in this account, sometimes, readers even can’t understand what are you talking about? And this is the problem you need to correct right away.

To ensure the readers understand what you want to express is very important and necessary, because once they can’t figure out what the writer wants to describe, then they even can’t read and understand the whole story, and then enjoy it.

III.6.2.3 Embodied variety of people and things

During the story, in the plot, we need to embody variety of characters and events to enrich the whole story. It is impossible that a novel story just has one character and an event. In the world you create for your story, characters encounter all kinds of supporting roles and events, so you need to figure out each factor in the plot and what the meaning and message of its appearance is. Then connect them to a story line.

Characters cause several story lines, so do events. Several characters and events cause many more story lines. What we need to do is take care of these factor and lines, and embody them.

III.6.2.4 Plot designing in the process

We talk about conceiving each part of the plot above, but when we are actually writing the novel, we may think just on the overall plot. There will be some problems when we keep writing down each sentence ──What about the detailed plot!

Connecting each big plot and thinking of the small plots in it is a more difficult thing than most writers think. The way to solve this problem is to think over and over again about what else you can put in these small gaps of each plot, and you have to keep the story exciting and make sure to keep the text before and after coherent.

You can also increase this factor by reading more books, but the better way is to keep on writing the story and manage to enrich the sentences. After a while, you will improve it gradually. Just take your time and let it become a habit.

III.6.2.5 Character designing in the process

Characters’ actions and reactions in the story have to be in focus, in any time, any way in the story process. Characters are always the main part of the story - every detail of the events, dialogues, moves, expressions, reactions and behaviors can all be reflecting the characters. So we must be careful when we are writing every part of the characters, we can also add some details like the characters’ small habits or mantra to abundantly illustrate this character.

III.6.2.6 Characters advance the story

There is always a big challenge for every single writer. Remember, don’t let your story lines control the characters’ actions and decisions. For a good story, it is always the characters who cause and make the plot.

III.6.3 After the story

III.6.3.1 Check out the mistakes and the conflicts in story

After you are done with your story or an amount of the words, sequels, don’t forget to check out your story for any big or little mistakes. Many writers just forget or are too lazy to revise the story, and after they keep writing, they just continue being wrong.

Develop good habits, don’t let some small mistakes ruin your story.

III.6.3.2 Adjust the plot

Some parts of the story you finished may just be too dull to read and have no meaning, so you can consider deleting them, change a way for them, rewrite the plot or develop a new plot replacing it. But don’t forget to check out whether the story’s structure is destroyed after you rewrite some plot into a new version. Because the plot is related to all the story lines and details, so you need to be careful and recheck over again and again.

III.6.3.3 The head and tail and process need to be echoed around

In your story, every plot needs to be echoed around with the head, tail, characters, events, details and everything.

Writing a long novel story is a large project, so don’t get careless!

III.6.3.4 Keep exercising and creating, accumulate experience

When you are done your first novel story, whether or not you think you just finished a great work, you have a nice accomplishment and can to some extent know how to create and write down a well-designed novel .

The next thing you need to do is not taking a rest and just put this project aside, if you have a great passion of writing novel and want to keep improving your novel writing skills, go ahead and think up another good story you want to write! After the time you spent, you’ll get more experience at it, and write it better and better!

III.7 Publishing and Marketing

If you are really good at writing novels, you can start to do your own business! Ordinarily, when most writers are reaching up to some levels, the next step they take is to send their masterpiece by E-mail or mail to the publishers. After the publishers’ editor has read your story and thinks it is good enough to publish for the market, they will connect with you and discuss other details of it. But, is it an exciting and high-level story sent to the publisher and can one hundred percent be published? No! There are more factors that the publishers will be considering. First, your story must be on a top level and be excellent. Second, your story genre has to conform to their publishing project. Third, your story has to correspond to the novel market.

To be published is a dream for many novel writers. If you really want to publish your book, you need to keep practicing the writing skills of novel and deeply investigate the novel market of now and each publisher.

If you really got a talent on writing novel, just take your time and keep working hard, one day you will realize your dream!

IV. Conclusion

Writing novel didn’t have a limit, any kind of art form by word is writing. It change every time, every person have their own way writing it and they have their own stories too. It is like building a house it need a base writing novel is need a base also. The more stable the base is the higher it can be. Novel writing skill seems kind of blur but actually it have some unspoken rules. If we can use it carefully we can get to the other level for writing. The word and the use of it, the smooth way of telling it, the interested topic and great chrematistic can all effect a good story line and the construction of the story. The things I just mention are some important stuff need to be remind, if we understand it time by time, keep improving. The time goes by we not only have a story that’s worth reading, and the words that can lead the reader into the life of our world and the sides and imagine.

The questionnaire topics

We investigated about fifty to one-hundred novel writers from friends and the internet to do a research.

A1.When you are a beginner to step into writing a novel story, what is the most difficult thing you think?

Q1:

A2.Which part of the writing skills of novel you think is the most difficult and knotty one when you are writing your own story? (Is the character, plot designing, dialogue narrative, terms and words, related knowledge or others?)

Q2:

A3.On your opinion, which genre of story do you prefer? (Is a love story, fantasy novel, science-fiction, adventure story, time-traveled story or others?)

Q3:

A4.How long do you think a person can roughly grasp the writing skills of novel?

Q4:

A5.Whether a person is good at the writing, and he can also be good at the novel writing?

Q5:

Yes No