• By Karen Winton
• Published 02/17/2011
• Fiction

Many people wish to learn how to write novels. If you are like them, in other words, if you’re thinking of becoming an author, then, you should know some pointers and steps on how you can write your novel. Below is some novel writing help that’s sure to help people who dream to become novelists someday: Pointer A: Decide on the genre of your book or novel. One of the very first steps you should take if you plan to write a book or a novel is to actually decide on the type of novel or the genre you’ll write about. Examples of genres are: romance, detective, science fiction, and many more. Part of the list of tips on how to write novels is to choose a genre you’re interested in. If you love reading romance pocketbooks, then, it is highly recommended that you choose the romance genre. If you enjoy reading detective stories e.g. Sidney Sheldon books, then, becoming an author of the detective genre is a good idea. When you write your novel, remember that the genre you select should be one that you can relate to, have an interest in, or something you’re passionate about. Pointer B: Think about the main characters first, specifically the protagonist and the antagonist.

After you’ve decided on your novel’s genre, you should come up with ideas regarding the story’s main characters:

the good guy or the protagonist, and the bad guy or the antagonist. A novel writing help is that you think of these things pertaining to your protagonist and antagonist: their social status, their ages, their names, their likes, their dislikes, their flaws, their good attributes, among others. A tip on how to write novels that you should keep in mind too is to avoid writing about a protagonist who is perfect, in other words with no flaws at all, as that is very unrealistic, and will surely turn off most readers. In the same way, any person becoming an author should also refrain from creating an antagonist who has no single good trait, as that is also unrealistic, and will make the readers find it impossible to connect with your antagonist, which is definitely a no-no. Write your novel realistically – wherein the protagonist have more good traits, yet still has one or two flaws, than the antagonist who has a lot of bad attributes, yet still has some goodness in some way.

A novel writing help that’s highly recommended to first time novelists or aspiring novel writers is to first try making a short story. Short stories are composed of only a few pages (not more than 30 pages), which can be your ‘practice pieces’ before you proceed to creating novels. Another strategy of how to write novels is to ensure that you’ll create an outline of the novel e.g. information about the characters, the actual setting in the story, the plot, etc.