I have this method for writing novels. It’s one I often readopt yet always fail to stick to. Like Alice, I give myself such very good advice, but very seldom follow it. But maybe things will be different with Project Z.
Project Z was introduced to you in my article of 20 January headlined Resolution 26, though I didn’t give at that name (or any other). It is a novel for children. In the book trade it would fall into the “middle grade” age group, meaning eight to 12-year-olds.
I suppose that’s the audience I have in mind, but I’m not thinking about targeting or reading the market or all those things you ought to do if you’re trying to find a publisher (which I’m not, at the moment) and attract droves of fans. For me, as I explained before, Project Z is primarily a piece of long-unfinished business that I am determined complete this year and, almost certainly, publish myself. Anything else can wait.
My (ahem) method is basically to reach a point where about the first third of the text is written in solid first draft form, all the characters are established and their backstories fixed (though not yet revealed to imagined Project Z readers), and the whole of plot, right the way to the end, has been worked out in advance. From that solid base I then, in theory, proceed to write the rest of the novel, knowing exactly what I’m doing, what happens next and after that and after that, until I get to the gripping and deeply meaningful end.
Well, I have reached that happy stage. Almost. As I previously explained, Project Z has been gestating for far too many years and various versions of the first 25,000 words or so – just over half of the intended finished length of 50,000 – have been floating around on my desktop, sometimes stored in forgotten folders, for ages. My task with getting to the one-third point this time around has largely involved combining and consolidating the various unfinished drafts and generally sharpening them up.
That has enabled me to complete, as I write, just over 18,000 words of the 50,000-word novel, or fractionally over the one-third of it that was my goal. In parallel with this I have made significant progress with the characters’ backstories, though I can’t claim they are finished yet. As for the rest of the plot – specifically, the part that will unfold in the last roughly 10,000 words of the book – that is taking shape but still needs thinking about. A clue: it will concern the main child characters entering London secretly and embarking on a dangerous rescue mission there. To be continued…
Meanwhile, the other short novel I intend to complete this year has received no serious attention from me at all, though it is bubbling away in my subconscious. I’m going to called that novel Project V. As for the third project, the one I’m very shy about, perhaps I’ll call that Project Nuts. Or Project Foolish. Or Project Daft. I don’t suppose I will, but you’re getting the idea. Stay tuned.
Buy John Vane’s London novel Frightgeist here . Photo show Infinite Accumulation, a sculpture by Yayoi Kusama, next to Liverpool Street station. Good, isn’t it?
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