Beginning the Novel

This book is designed so as to provide within one cover everything a novelist needs to begin a longer work of fiction. Its basic approach is both directive and prescriptive, but it is also flexible enough to account for all the possible modes and genres from children's fairy-tale to mainstream best-seller. It is the type of book that could be a self-help "How-To" work for the individual writer, as well as a useful tool for the creative writing classroom. The book provides both the university instructor and the individual writer a hands-on system of instruction to follow in taking a potential novel from its initial germination as an idea to an opening chapter and a complete blocking-out. In a gradual and practical step-by-step procedure, the book will give the inexperienced writer the actual process by which professional novelists create their works, and at the same time, take away the possibly intimidating aura of writing as a mystical process available to only the very clever or the mystically endowed. Contents: The Process; The Techniques; The Idea; The Characters; The Story; The Plot Structure; The Plot Elements; The Complete Blocking Out; The Opening Chapter; The Rest of the Novel; Marketing Your Novel; Bibliography; Glossary; Index.