I have finished a third draft of my novel's prologue, Chapter 1, and Chapter 2. but now I have run into a real snag: not with Chapter 3, but with the entire novel -- there is no story. Oh yes, things happen to the characters and the characters interact with each other, but... the thing itself has no underlying meaning.
Also, there is no single protagonist. In fact, every one of the characters seems to be the main character at the moment within his or her individual scene. The textbook Fiction Writing For Dummies states absolutely that a story cannot have more than one protagonist. There can only be one main character who is presented with a problem, seeks to overcome that problem, is thwarted in that quest time and again, and finally triumphs in the end. Other fiction writing textbooks say the same thing.
These How To books are not telling me how to write a novel. Not at all. What they are telling me is how to write a novel that will be published, one that will be bought by book buyers, and will be read by the purchaser.
Oh well. I can always stop writing and go off to read a book -- a book that has an interesting and well-plotted story, one written by a real author.
And I can then come back and write some more, perhaps finding some meaning in my manuscript that I had originally overlooked.
Perhaps.
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Smokers Suck!
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Still don't feel very well. My stomach is queasy, my muscles sore and joints stiff, eyesight weak and filled with dancing spots... occasional spells of light-headedness. Tired, no energy. Mentally sluggish. Congestion that comes and goes. Sporadic fits of coughing. Sudden sneezes, sometimes as many as six in a row.
And there's more, but...
Ah well, that's enough complaining.
After all, today is Christmas Eve.
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Advanced Fiction Writing is another web site that claims the ability to teach a person how to write a novel that will be published. It raves about The Snowflake Method.
Sometimes I think I would be better off if I would just ignore all these "How To" offerings and just write whatever I want to write, and to write it my way and be happy with that -- just forget about getting the results published. After all, I have seen some of my stuff in print before, back in my younger years, and it's not such a great and wonderful thing. The Earth does not tremble. It does not stop rotating.
The feeling of pride in an accomplishment lasts for about a minute and a half... then life goes on.
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Eva is requesting that I take her outside.
So...
So...
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Three rules for literary success:
1. Read a lot.
2. Write a lot.
3. Read a lot more, write a lot more.
--Robert Silverberg
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