Are you an enthusiastic reader? Do you love books? Do you read contemporary fiction?’
• ‘Had to read ‘Of Mice and Men’ at school, and it was OK, I suppose. Not read a book since then, though.’
• ‘Never read books. Don’t have time.’
• ‘Modern stuff? It can’t compare with the proper classics.’
• ‘I mean, these days, people even start a sentence with ‘and’. Sometimes they don’t even have a finite verb in their so-called sentence!’
If your answers to those questions would be anything like these, writing a book might not be the best activity for you. Well, not a novel, anyway. Not one that is ever likely to find a publisher.
The best advice I can give anyone intending to write a novel is: read what’s out there. You don’t need to spend a fortune – especially if you’re reasonably close to a free library, and even if you’re not, books can be bought very cheaply in thrift shops.
Writing a novel is a huge investment in time, so why not prepare yourself by devoting a few hours per week to extending your range of reading matter. It’s important to know the type of novels you enjoy yourself. That sounds obvious, but even if you do already have your favourite genre, don’t get stuck in the past: Agatha Christie might still be widely read, but crime novels have moved on since then.
Not only should you be aware of what’s been published within the last few years, you should also (a) decide if you like these books or not, and (b) analyse how the author has produced the effects that you have enjoyed. For example, if you’ve been able to picture the scene very clearly, has the writer included lots of detail, or has s/he managed with merely a few brief phrases, leaving the rest to your own imagination?
One of the most frequent mistakes made by beginners is to include too much detail.
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