How does your novel start? Is the first line memorable? Does it grab the attention of the reader? In my debut novel, a psychological thriller, “It Can’t Be You” I wanted to start by telling the reader about an important event that had taken place in as concise and impactful manner as I could. The result:” The man was dead.” Continue reading “The First Line”
Tag: novel writing
You may have noticed it. I did too. I hadn’t realized that I haven’t blogged for a week now. The reason is obvious. It is that time of the year! I have been totally engrossed in the National Novel Writing Month. NaNoWriMo 2011 is as exciting as previous years for me. I have got off a bright start. In the first five days, I have completed 14, 500 words of my novel. Continue reading “NaNoWriMo 2011- An Update”
Things are warming up on the NaNoWriMo front. Yes, I am ready for the National Novel Writing Month 2011. My entry will be a project which has been on my mind for some time. A thriller/mystery novel called “Let The Dead Stay Dead”. Continue reading ““Let The Dead Stay Dead””
Article first published as Cracking NaNoWriMo on Technorati. With about twenty days left for NaNoWriMo, there’s still time for you to plan to participate and succeed. Here are my tips on “Cracking NaNoWriMo”.
It was a toss-up between writing and a writer. One part of me wanted to write about P.G.Wodehouse, my favourite author. Another urged me to write about an old passion which is now a central part of my life, writing! Continue reading “W for Writing”
In the old days, a chapter was a kind of milestone or guidepost, if you will, in the novel. It sort of led you from one major point to another, often depicting sequential events in time or points of view of different characters in the story. They were fairly long and usually of varying length. Recently, I came across a very different treatment of what I imagined chapters would be in James Patterson’s “Cross Country”
Yay! I have just finished NaNoWriMo 2010 having reached 50,000 words for my novel “Lucky For Some, Thirteen”. I recognize that the novel is far from being complete though I have much to celebrate about. I have finished the first step- that of writing the foundation of the novel. Typically, novels in the genre I write in of thrillers/mysteries should be of at least 70,000-80,000 words.
Have you had to change the name of your novel? Once? Several times? When I first wrote ” It Can’t Be You” my soon to be published (December 2010) debut novel, I had only one name in my mind. The name stems from a note left by a person who dies! I thought it quite appropriate.
I wonder what your opinion is but I don’t like clear distinctions between protagonists and antagonists. I say so because like in many other aspects of life, these are not clearly demarcated in black and white.
A story like this needs to come from deep within the characters. This was the premise on which I started writing “It Can’t Be You”. To give you, the reader, a sense of their thoughts and feelings, I chose to use the first person narrative for the most part of the book.
Prem Rao : Stories from a Story Teller 