Writing Your Novel from Start to Finish by Joseph Bates

At the end of the book, there are 27 worksheets devoted to everything from character descriptions and tracking subplots to writing the closing scene. Part 3 is all about Endings, of course, and touches upon such things as the completion of the character arc, filling in plot holes, and revising the manuscript.īates includes “coffee breaks” after each part, which feature questions to answer about your own book that help you apply what you learned in the previous chapters. Part 2 focuses on Middles and tackles the use of dialogue to increase tension, the use of backstory to create well-developed characters, and plot pacing, among other things. Part 1 is devoted to Beginnings and covers such things as developing ideas and characters, plot planning, fleshing out subplots, choosing a point of view, and writing an attention-grabbing opening scene. The Nighttime Novelist is divided into three parts. And Bates puts a new spin on these old tips with mini-lessons for writers pressed for time.

Although much of the advice I’ve heard before - either in college-level creative writing courses or the many issues of Writer’s Digest I’ve collected over the years - it’s nice to have it all in a single book. While I read the book, I highlighted things I thought pertained to my novel-in-progress and took notes throughout. However, with a full-time job, a 3.5-hour round-trip commute, and a 10-year-old daughter, I often don’t get a chance to sit down and write until I really should be getting my beauty sleep for work the next day.Įnter Bates to the rescue with The Nighttime Novelist, which offers mini-lessons that take only a few minutes to complete but have a huge impact on your work. I’ve been working on a novel for several years now, mostly planning out the plot and subplots and developing the characters, and recently I started seriously writing it. Contrary to what I might have said at the time, it wasn’t really a novel, as it was only about 50 pages long. (I finished what one might call my first book when I was in junior high, and while I probably still have a copy somewhere, I still cringe when I think about it. When I saw that the book is subtitled “Finish Your Novel in Your Spare Time,” I thought it would come in handy. As someone who’s been writing stories, poems, and even books since I learned how to read and write, and as someone who one day would like to be a published novelist, I found The Nighttime Novelist by Joseph Bates to be a very useful resource.

Writing Your Novel from Start to Finish by Joseph Bates