Intro to Fiction Novel Writing
“Professor” Rj Waltz
Alright class. Sit down and shut the hell up, because I’m about to drop some knowledge. Oh, right. I keep forgetting that there isn’t actually a classroom. It’s words on a page. Okay! Here’s the first thought experiment. Imagine that you’re sitting in one of those large dusty classrooms lit up hardhly with loud buzzing overhead fluroescent bulbs. Each row of the class is set up on stairs to create a large cathedral allowing for the worship of the written word by the monkey standing in front of the white board down there at the bottom. Yet, somehow, everyone sitting above that teaching instrument looking down on them will feel inferior enough to listen to what that teacher has to say enough to take out a pen and paper to transcribe what they have to tell them about long since dead poets and novelists who barely sold half a book on their first editions.
I am that teacher. Well, for the moment, at least. Call me Rj Waltz. I am your professor for this ‘course’. What is this course? Well, I’d have to say that it’s a course about how to write a fiction novel. That’s probably the one subject that I feel that I have the authority to try teaching to someone else. While I don’t have the formal education to teach a proper class, that certainly hasn’t stopped others from coming forth and teaching things they have no business teaching. Teaching kids to draw things from memory instead of using references or writers to start with short stories or poems and earn their way to writing a novel. If you come to this class thinking that you aren’t good enough or practiced enough to write an entire book from scratch, then I am pleased to tell you that you are in good hands.
Alright, class, I want you to repeat after me. You can say this either out loud and startle the crap out of those strangers around you, or you can say it with that weird inner voice that speaks to you in your head that makes you secretly worry that you have some serious mental disorder. Repeat this sentence: “I am a writer.” What? I’m serious. Just do it. Say it again. Say it as much as you want. It doesn’t matter if you don’t believe it. Well, let me clarify that. It doesn’t matter to me. The more writers out there that talk themselves out of publishing their novels by labels like, “I’m an aspiring writer,” or “I’m not a real writer,” then that’s less competition for me and my violently obscure romance book series. Me and the millions of published Amazon eBook peddlers out there can use all of the advantages that we can get. I can’t speak for anyone else, but I don’t respect anyone who calls themself an aspiring anything. If you are going to bring up your interests, you own that shit and call yourself a writer.
Class, I will concede to some of your complaints about me aggressively rebranding all of you as writers. To be a writer, you have to have the tools of a writer. I wouldn’t call someone a painter if they didn’t have some viscous material that can be spread on a flat-ish surface, after all. To be a writer, you must be able to write. In order to write, you need the tools in order to write. I don’t think that there should be a cost involved in writing anything, but, sadly, we live in a society where things cost money. In order to publish your book easily and freely on Amazon, you’ll need some sort of computer with an internet connection. That’s a place to start. I’m not particularly worried, since you are reading this on some form of technology. Well, unless this has been printed out and put into a zine. In which case, I suggest to any writer to get themselves something that allows them to type up words. A common problems that most writers face is the multitude of programs available to catch those words and keeping them organized until they’re ready for a publisher’s consumption in exchange for a fraction of each dollar that those words are sold for.
Get out your notebooks, because it’s time for you to learn what school supplies you should’ve brought to class today. Yes, that’s right. You’re all in trouble before class even starts. Anyway, here goes. First off, to hell with Microsoft Word. It sufficed for your little high school essays in class, but it’s too damn expensive for how little features it has. LibreOffice and OpenOffice are both infinitely more free and provide exactly the same services. Not a lot. If you’re in the mood for free stuff, bust out that old Microsoft email account and get yourself a copy of Microsoft OneNote. It’s the best thing I have ever used for outlining a novel. Don’t know what outlining is? Stick around and I’ll get to that later. Point is, OneNote is free, syncs between a thousand devices, and is purple. Most writers recommend a solid note-taking app, and they’re all riding on the Evernote train. I, however, am not. I’m sick to death of subscriber-based services that rip the guts out of their free versions. Right now I’m using Nimbus Note, which is a more free Evernote clone that leaves my wallet alone. Other free options I’ve tried are things like Google Keep and that free notepad that came with my mom’s iPhone. Point is, I use Nimbus Note because it’s free and syncs. If you’re paranoid about losing your stories (and you frickin’ should be) you can’t go wrong with Dropbox. It’s free and it syncs. For writing my novel, I caved and bought Scrivener. It’s forty bucks (or 50% off if you can win a NaNoWriMo contest) and it has more features than anything I’ve ever used for writing novels. It’s not free and doesn’t sync, but you can put it on an army of computers if you have the license key for it. I largely ignore the iPhone and android apps, but I don’t care enough to condemn others for typing out epic 100k word fantasy sagas on their tiny iPhone screen. Man, my thumbs hurt just thinking about that.
I suppose you could go for a more traditional setup. Maybe you don’t have a computer or need to feel excruciating pain by writing everything out by hand. Now, I’m not going to sit her and pretend that my word is Gospel (much), but in my travels I have found the best way to write rough drafts by hand. Okay, take that pretty little moleskin notebook you just had to have on your last trip to Barnes & Nobles and toss it back into the frickin’ notepad pile that you keep hidden in that box of shame in the corner of your closet. You don’t need that for writing. Go out and buy a three-ring binder. Now, I can feel your collective eyes burning holes into my forehead, but trust me on this. Adopt the feng-shui of the three-ring binder with the loose-leaf paper. Ms. Davis was right all along. Well, sort of. She still doesn’t know why Ishmael was really out on that boat. See, the thing about that pretty moleskin is that you can, and will, make a mistake. You’ll write a chapter out of order or have to cross out a paragraph. You can’t tear a page out of the moleskin without runining the hell out of it. Trust me, I’ve tried. Guess what you can take a page out of? That’s right; a frickin’ three-ring binder. Go get one. They’re cheap, and a pack of paper ammo is usually like a dollar.
Alright, class. Now that you have your supplies list, this course on novel writing can really begin. Here’s a run-down of all the crap you need to know. Now, I’m gonna be covering all of this stuff as we go along on this little journey. Wouldn’t be much of a fictional teacher if I didn’t. But if I didn’t give y’all a run through so some of the harder workers can go on ahead of the rest of the class, I’m fairly certain that they would unhinge their collective jaws and swallow me whole in order to gain my power. That reminds me, I need to get a tattoo. First up; we’re doing outlines, then character design, then plot structure, then story structure, then archetypes, then some description stuff, then dialogue work, then some perspective junk, then we’ll talk about over-writing versus under-writing, then chapters, then conflict, then research, then criticism, then editing, then, finally, finishing a story. I’ll do those classes in some sort of cohesive order, probably. Is that too much for you? Well, joke’s on you. That’s only for the rough draft, suckahs! There are at minimum two more drafts of a story before you should even consider publishing it. Oh, did you think that writing a book was easy? I guess you probably didn’t, otherwise you’d be floundering in the deep end without my guidance. You guys are smart. I gotta keep an eye on you.
Alright, I’ll wrap this up, since I’m getting sick of talking. Homework! Tell yourself that you’re a writer. Screw that “aspiring” crap. Do it until it becomes comfortable. After and/or before that, get yourself a writing instrument. I recommend whatever makes you feel the most creative. However, keep in mind that your book has to be on a computer before it’s ready to be published. Email me any questions you have, and I’ll try to answer them in between my blackout periods. Any objections? No? Good.
Class dismissed!
