Graphic by Peg Ihinger
I ran across a place the other day that had a free “how to prepare for writing your novel” worksheet. Since I’m starting a new novel and I’m always curious about this stuff, I downloaded it on a whim. The worksheet turns out to be a list of “key things you need to know before you start writing,” and it all fits on one page, which made me wary right from the start.
The first thing on the list is “Title—Pick a title.” I blink and then shrug. You do want to have something to call the thing you’re working on, but it’s not the first thing I worry about. It’s not even the second thing. I’m frequently on Chapter Three of “The [Protagonist’s Name] Book” before I come up with a working title that actually sounds like a title, and in the end my editors have changed it at least four times that I can think of off the top of my head. Still Talking to Dragons started with the title, so it does happen. It just doesn’t happen to me very often.
The next line is “Byline.” I am about to go on a rant about pen names, when I see the description: “Claim your story! Assert your authority over your work!” I think, What? I mean, if my story isn’t going the way I want it to, having “BY: ME” at the top of the page doesn’t change that at all. Also, a byline is not something I have ever needed to think about in order to write something, not even back when I was debating about whether to use my maiden name or my married one on my first novel. It didn’t even come up until after the editorial revisions.
Next comes “Genre” with a list of places to look for suggestions if you don’t know what genre you want to write. I shrug. This also isn’t anywhere near the top of my personal “List of things to think about before starting a story.” Either the genre is obvious from the story idea, or I write the story and then figure out the genre.
By this time, my expectations of this “how to start your novel” list have dropped significantly. And then I get to “Ideal Reader.” This is not just something I don’t feel any need to think about. It is something I actively refuse to think about if I can possibly help it. When I’m writing or preparing to write, I need to think about the story, not who might read or like it. Honestly, I don’t even think about it when I’m doing the final round of polishing.
I start skimming. After “Ideal Reader” comes “Competition” (make a list of the top books in your chosen genre. Just list them; there’s nothing about actually reading them, which would actually be helpful if you are planning on writing a random genre you know nothing about) and “Point” (what your message is…ugh) and then, finally something possibly useful: “Protagonist’s Arc.”
Wait, “Protagonist’s Arc”? But there isn’t a protagonist yet. There isn’t even a story or a situation. I look at the description. Apparently, I’m supposed to decide what my protagonist wants and how the story will change him/her/it/them before I know anything about who he/she/it/they are, where and when he/she/it/they live, or, well, anything about him/her/it/them except for their existence. I suppose that’s possible, but deciding that my protagonist is “Someone Who Wants To Graduate From High School Next Week” is not very helpful to me. Everybody who has made it to the week before graduation from high school is eager to get out of there next week, but they are definitely not all going to have the same character arcs.
Next comes “Central Conflict.” That, too, might be useful, if my protagonist actually felt like a person and not a faceless Someone Who Wants To Graduate From High School Next Week. Though this getting-started worksheet still expects me to figure out what is keeping Protagonist from getting what she/he/it/they wants (it suggests “their boss” for an external obstacle and “fear” as an internal one, neither of which seems to apply to Someone Who Wants To Graduate From High School Next Week).
“Scope” comes next, which apparently means how much time the story is going to cover. I still don’t know what the story is; how should I know whether it covers the next two weeks of the character’s life, the next four years they spend in college/trade school/first job, or their entire biography until they die at 85? I suppose I could set up a target and throw darts at it…
Oh, finally we get to something recognizably useful: “PLOT SUMMARY.” In all caps and bold face, which is appropriate because this is important. And…Oh, dear. “Summarize your entire story in four or five sentences.” That’s not a plot summary, that’s an elevator pitch. Yes, boiling a novel down into a short paragraph is a useful skill, and there are definitely writers who start with a single paragraph and blow it up into a plot skeleton, and then into a full-fledged plot summary, and keep blowing it up through chapter and scene outlines until it’s a novel, but this worksheet doesn’t talk about any of that. It talks about the importance of having a four-sentence plot summary to use as an elevator pitch (Aha! I thought so) or for posting on Amazon. No comment about how to get from the four-sentence summary to the novel that needs the Amazon blurb. Maybe that’s the next entry.
No, the next entry is “Ideal Book Review.” It goes from a four-sentence summary to somebody reviewing an imaginary book that has a single, nameless character (unless you think Someone-Who-Wants-To-Graduate-From-High-School-Next-Week is a good name), no setting, no backstory, no minor characters, and only those four sentences worth of plot. This reminds me of that cartoon where the professor is writing a long series of equations on the blackboard, and right in the middle there’s a line that says “And then a miracle occurs.”
And the last entry is “Worst Possible Book Review.” Why is this supposed to be helpful? Why would anybody want to see that, ever, let alone as part of getting ready to write a book?
This is why I seldom bother to look at worksheets like this.
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