The book serves as a kind of manual or advice handbook for participating in National Novel Writing Month (a challenge I've explained elsewhere), and a lot of the writing exercises and strategies are particularly relevant to those trying to eke time out of their "real life" in which to write a 50,000-word novel during the month of November, but some of them stood out to me then -- and still stand out to me now -- as getting at something fundamental about all writing, and the kinds of desires that ought to motivate it.
I've forgotten more of the book than I'd like to admit, but four years (and four novel-filled Novembers) later, one of the exercises strikes me as particularly important. It's the one Chris calls "the Magna Carta." The idea is simple. Take a piece of paper. Now write at the top, in big and important letters, "WHAT MAKES A GOOD NOVEL." Now make a list. Make it your list, not anyone else's. Think about the kinds of novels you love to read, and be honest with yourself about what they're like and what you like about them. Finally, take your finished list and put it somewhere you can see it. When things get tough, when the writing isn't "working," look back at that list and use it as a way to diagnose your novel's problems, because if you don't like your novel, how much does it matter if anyone else does?
Of course these lists can change. In getting ready to write this year's novel, I stumbled across the Magna Carta list that I wrote four years ago, and for the first time thought, "That's not what my list looks like anymore." So I started working on a new one.
WHAT MAKES A GOOD NOVEL
- characters and relationships that question traditional gender roles and/or established social hierarchies; bonds and affinities that cross boundaries of gender, class, or simply expectation without perpetuating inequalities
- girls and women who possess noteworthy mental, physical, and/or emotional strength, which they use to advance the course of the story
- clever integration of the supernatural, unnatural, magical, and/or unexpected to highlight and complicate, rather than to dismiss or solve, the conflicts of the characters and (more generally) the problems of modern existence
- a spunky and spirited character who will not take no for an answer, who is a go-getter and an optimist and may not always succeed but keeps on trying (not necessarily protagonist)
- deliberation regarding setting, both time and place; a sense that these places are loved by and important to the story as a whole in addition to specific characters within the story- children who have honest, mature, complex, and ultimately positive relationships with their parents- parents and/or mentors who support children in tackling the big things life throws at them (everything from love to warfare) while ultimately letting them make their own decisions, and providing them with the sense that those decisions matter- complex antagonist(s), who operate in tandem with internal conflicts to hassle the protagonist(s)- realistic dialogue that is always emotionally charged but only rarely straightforward; dialogue-as-conflict, dialogue-as-occasional-misunderstanding, but never dialogue-as-utterly-impossible
- ultimate affirmation of the transcendent power of love, language, literature, creativity, and/or cooperation; faith in the possibility of intersubjective exchange, however mediated it may be
It's obviously not exhaustive, and I'm sure that it'll keep growing and changing as I keep growing and changing, but it's a good place to start. And if you wrote up a "Magna Carta" of your own, I'd love to know what might make its way onto your list!
