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Studying Writing v. Reverse Engineering

KNOW WHERE YOU ARE STARTING FROM:

I am a new writer myself and by no means do I hold myself out to be any type of an expert. But I am still very close to the "very beginner status" and still understand some of the obstacles only a brand new writer is faced with.

The experts can't remember having "two left hands" anymore, but I sure can. My purpose is to blog as I move through the learning process, so I can share my experience and research and save other newbies research time as there is so much to learn!

Some new authors will already have studied writing or may be young enough to decide to study writing in a college or a formal learning environment. Hopefully, the institute or teacher you have will have circularized the information you need to know and you will be taking it all in in some organized way.

Others may be writing as a hobby or a second career, or like myself, preparing for a busy retirement. Either way, it’s important to know where you are beginning and what you even know about writing. Having gone to parochial schools, I had English classes until I was just about drown in them. So that is one of my strong points. However, I never took a creative writing lesson in my life and so writing a novel, specifically, I had no clue when I started out.

I worked as a court reporter and legal assistant for many years and although I am not a lawyer, I sat in more trials than many real lawyers, know what the court office of a Judge looks and feels like, what a busy lawyers office looks and feels like, and many more “mini-careers” like this. So I bring a broad spectrum of experience and a bit of legal understanding to my writing. I consider that a strong point too.

KNOW WHAT TYPE OF BOOKS YOU WANT TO WRITE:

I have always loved shows that use the church or the Vatican or some other religious theme as a background. Unfortunately, hollywood and the publishing world in general are very disrespectful to religious symbols and this always took away from the enjoyment of the stories. I knew I wanted to use a church backdrop of some kind, but leave out all the blasphemy and spittle.

I also knew that I loved to read mystery, suspense and they usually have at least a splash of romance in them. So this too would be where I would concentrate.

KNOW WHERE YOU WANT TO GO:

So the first task was to figure out how to go from wanting to write a mystery romance with a church/Christian backdrop to actually writing a novel of this kind. My legal skills or grammar skills were not going to get me there, so what is a person to do? I went to YouTube an began watching videos, and there are thousands of them, written by successful authors as well as young college-educated editors. I got a mix of people sharing about creative writing, story beats, plots points, etc., to successful authors who, like me, started with one book and self-published their books on their own.

KNOW WHAT SKILLS YOU HAVE AND WHAT SKILLS YOU NEED:

I needed to learn what a mystery romance novel needed, story structure, how to break up the story, how to pace the story, plot points, story beats, pretty much everything. So for about a year and a half, I dedicated myself to simply learning about writing to see if it was something I could do, as I did learn very early on that one simple phrase of “I want to write a book” encompasses so many skills that must be acquired or paid for, that it can be an overwhelming process.

My first area of focus was structuring a story. How to organize the story seemed to be the first over-whelming obstacle for me so I began reading books on structuring a story.

Story Engineering by Larry Brooks was my favorite as he was, I believe, an engineer by trade before becoming an author and he has a very organized mind and he laid out planning a novel with an overview that I found most helpful as a newbie. I have an associates link below to the book.

I would recommend this book because I needed an overview of the process, like a birds-eye view, in order to even have the files to hold the information I was taking in watching various YouTube videos. You can learn anything on YouTube, but you need to learn to circularize your own course. You need to figure out how to take in the information so it all makes sense.

Writing A Novel in Scrivener

I speak from experience. Thinking ahead to my retirement in another three years, I began thinking about spending my time writing Christian and Catholic-friendly novels as I love to read books by other authors in his genre. I had some idea of what writing a novel would take, but never having studied writing in any detailed way, my first obstacle was where to begin. I was stuck at this spot for awhile and stayed there until I found a writing program called Scrivener.

I "thought about" writing for at least a year but the first hurdle was the biggest => Where to begin? How to even organize my thoughts? Should I write in Word? I couldn't figure out how I could organize or keep track of anything.

Finally, in watching some other "new author" videos on YouTube, several of them were talking about writing in Scrivener, a relatively inexpensive writing tool that was designed specifically for writers. After checking it out, I was sold in less than 10 minutes.

WHY DID SCRIVENER HELP ME OVER THE FIRST HURDLE?

Scrivener is a simple but brilliant program that is designed for writers. It allows you a birds-eye view at all times. You keep your chapters or dates on the left hand side, you write in the middle, and you can outline, add keywords, research notes, reminders, and anything else you find helps you on the right hand side.

It can also be used to help you write and organize a blog website, really anything.

SMALL LEARNING CURVE:

Scrivener is one of these programs that is very comprehensive, but there is not a HUGE learning curve as with programs like Photoshop or Premier Pro Video Software, programs like this. You can get up and running with Scrivener by watching a few ‘how to’ videos that other authors and writers are kind enough to make.

WHAT NOT TO DO:

Once I watched about 10 videos about getting started, I got lost in trying to find a template that would work for me and this turned out to be a complete waste of time. I wound up working with one folder and just text documents that during the draft phase I named by Date and time (which as a new write I am/was obsessed with) and this way, I always knew what day I was in in the story line.

I also spent too long adding a fancy chapter ending that I wound up having to do and redo I can’t tell you how many times and it wound being all for naught. Chapter endings are things you should only worry about when getting ready to publish.

DOWNLOAD SCRIVENER FREE TRIAL OR STRAIGHT OUT PURCHASE.
https://www.literatureandlatte.com/

Writing a Mystery Novel – Where To Begin

DON'T DO WHAT I FIRST DID!

In preparation to write my first mystery novel, I watched random videos on YouTube by successful authors and successful book marketers, all of whom had great information about how to write books. The videos usually take one subject at a time, and when you watch videos in some random fashion, which I did, you wind up overwhelmed with information and no way to organize it or process it. The purpose of this blog post is to give some tips from one beginner to another. This is more like a how not to do things vs. how to do things. The purpose of this post is to help you not waste time and energy and to get right down to business, which I wish I did.

ARE YOU A PANTSER OR A PLOTTER?

When I began to hear terms like “panters and/or plotter” I didn’t even know what they were talking about. A pantser, if you don’t know if someone who just sits down and begins to write “by the seat of their pants” without any organization and without any plot line. They approach the writing from a completely creative process. I imagine that “natural writers” would take this approach. Maybe people who like chaos would take this route. But I would wind up staring at a blank page all day if I didn’t have at least an outline.

I knew I was going to be a plotter right from the beginning. So your first order of business in writing a novel is to then have your plot line. That sounds easy enough, right? Well, depending up on what type of book you are writing, this will determine what type of plot line you will need. For example: If you are writing a true crime novel, you have a chronology of events that is pretty much written in stone. So you will have a ready-made plot line. If you are writing a fictional novel, then you have to write a chronological plotline and you need to determine where to drop clues, where to begin subplots, where to hide subtle clues as to the real villian, where to throw in a red herring or two, etc. This is where it can get a little tricky.

MYSTERIES BEGIN WITH A CRIME AND ARE PLOTTED BACKWARDS:

It took me awhile to realize that it is too easy to write yourself into a corner with no way out if you start writing from the characters. Many of the how-to videos I watched in the beginning said that it all beings with characters and conflict. This is true that each story has characters and conflict, but most mysteries have some kind of a crime and/or injustice. Once I realized that it is easier to begin with the crime and plot backwards, this made things much easier.

REVERSE ENGINEERING A CRIME/MURDER:

1. How is the victim killed and/or harmed?
2. Who is responsible? (This gives you your murderer)
3. Who else in the story has motive to kill the victim? (This gives you your multiple suspects)
4. Who is completely innocent but looks really guilty? (This gives you your red herring)
5. Where does the plot/murder take place? (factory, park, someone’s house, outside a bar?)
6. Who ultimately solves the crime? (This gives you your protagonist)
7. Who is working against the solving fo the crime? (This gives you at least one antagonist)
8. Who wanders in and winds up having a romance with the protagonist? (This gives you your romantic subplot)

A LITTLE BIT ABOUT THE LOCATION OF THE CRIME/MURDER:

It is best as a beginner to choose a location and setting that you are familiar with. It will cut down on the research you need to do, as you will need to do at least some forensic and police procedure research. For example: I used to be a court reporter for 11 years and I have experience working on criminal cases, how prisoners are moved around the courthouse, how sheriff’s officers and prison guards are different from cops, what goes on in a Judge’s chambers on breaks and after the jury goes home. So this is a good setting for me to write about.

Let’s say you worked in a bar and restaurant when you were in college. You know the intricacies of this setting. Wherever you worked will be a good setting to work with because you already have intricate knowledge about how it all works. This cuts down on wresting with too much in your first novel.

THE MAIN CHARACTER:

One of the biggest mistakes I made in the beginning was focusing too much on the main character. With a mystery, you need to have a unique crime that hasn’t been done before. Because there are millions of mystery books, your specific crime may have been done, but you want to make sure you don’t pick on that has been “done to death”.

So all of the thinking I did regarding who the main character would be was for naught. It was a waste of time. It all started with the mystery/murder and the motive and antagonist. That’s where I ultimately started -- after I had to wipe out a lot of the erroneous information I had taken in about the lead character being the main focus. In a mystery novel, in the planning stages, the mystery/murder is the genesis of the story.

Once you have your crime and a group of suspects, the protagonist almost creates him or herself. It comes down to who would likely solve this crime? Is it a cozy mystery with an Aunt Mildred as the top sleuth or is it a police procedural mystery where it will be all about how the cops outwit the murderer? In my case, I chose a private investigator as I wanted him to be someone who had a friendship with a priest so I could have a Christian/Catholic backdrop to the story. By picking a private investigator, I also allowed for a little leeway on police procedure. A PI is more likely to break the rules and go rogue than a cop these days and the police procedures are so technical now that unless you are an ex cop or you have someone you can literally call a few times a week to run things by them, then you will have a lot of research to do.

WHERE TO GET INSPIRATION FOR CRIMES?

I watched Forensic Files for awhile and paid particular attention to the chronology of how they solved the crimes, what the cops did, and what the scientists did. They have such unusual crimes on these shows and such an array of them, this is a good source of inspiration. I tried checking my local papers, but 95% of the cases are drug cases or random shootings and they don’t make interesting plot lines by themselves.

If you have any other advice for us beginning writers and wish to share with us, please contact me and I would be happy to do a blog post or video featuring your lesson or tips for us.