the writing workbench
"When I say writing... it is rewriting that I have chiefly in mind." - Robert Louis StevensonNovel Writing
A novel is loosely a long fiction prose involving character and action and telling a story. The novel is longer (at least 50,000 words) and more complex than either the short story or the novella.
Novel Ingredients
Story Goals Drive Scenes
You meet that need at the outset of your story when you show your character coming up with a vital intention or story goal, designed to "fix things" for him in terms of his sensation of being out of equilibrium with his environment. Every good fiction character is thus goal-motivated.
The moment your character thinks or says aloud what his goal is -- as a result of the change and the need to fix things -- you can count on your reader to latch onto that stated goal like a lifeline. The moment your character states his goal, the reader will begin to worry about that -- will follow every later story incident and interpret its meaning in terms of your character's struggle toward that goal -- will turn the goal statement into a story question -- and keep reading avidly as long as the action relates to the question.
So a story starts with change, which leads to a goal, which raises a story question in the reader's mind. - Scene & Structure by Jack M. Bickham
