Writing the Novel_ From Plot to Print - Lawrence Block [2]
The answer, of course, is that there’s no such thing as a formula. Except in the genuinely rare instances of writers who tend to write the same book over and over, every novel is a wholly new experience.
In Some Thoughts I Have in Mind When I Teach, Wendell Berry makes the point that
No good book was ever written according to a recipe. Every good book is to a considerable extent a unique discovery. And so one can say with plenty of justification that nobody knows “how to write.” Certainly nobody knows how other people ought to. For myself, though I think I know how to write the books I have already written—and though I guess, wrongly no doubt, that I could now write them better than I did—I am discomforted by the knowledge that I don’t know how to write the books that I have not yet written. But that discomfort has an excitement about it, and it is the necessary antecedent of one of the best kinds of happiness.
Some of the books I write involve series characters. I’ve done three books, for example, about a burglar named Bernie Rhodenbarr; in each of them he becomes the prime suspect in a homicide investigation because of his activities as a burglar, and in order to get himself out of the jam he has to solve the murder himself. There is, clearly, a similarity to the structure of all three of these books which at a cursory glance might well look like a formula.
But each plot is significantly different and each book, let me assure you, has presented its own specific problems. You might think the books would become easier to write. The third, just recently completed as I write these lines, was by a fair margin the most difficult of the three.
As a noun, novel means a book-length prose narrative. As an adjective, it means “of a new kind or nature.” The dual definition is historic, of course, deriving from a time when the novel was a new fictional form. Still, I see it as a happy accident, for every novel is novel.
I would suppose that a majority of this book’s readers have yet to write a book-length work of fiction. It is commonplace to hear that the first novel presents special problems to author and publisher alike. But in a larger sense every novel is a first novel, presenting no end of unique problems, carrying enormous risks, and offering immense excitement and other rewards.
If you’re unprepared for the risks, perhaps you’d like to rethink this whole business of novel-writing. If you’re unwilling to live with the possibility of failure, perhaps you’d be more comfortable writing laundry lists and letters to the editor.
If you really want to write a novel, stick around.
One thing you won’t find in this book is an explanation of the way to write a novel.
Because I don’t believe there is one. Just as every novel is unique, so too is every novelist. The study I’ve made of the writing methods of others has led me to the belief that everybody in this business spends a lifetime finding the method that suits him best, changing it over the years as he himself evolves, adapting it again and again to suit the special requirements of each particular book. What works for one person won’t necessarily work for another; what works with one book won’t necessarily work with another.
Some novelists outline briefly, some in great detail, and a few produce full-fledged treatments that run half the length of the final book itself. Others don’t outline at all. Some of us revise as we go along. Others do separate drafts. Some of us write sprawling first drafts and wind up cutting them to the bone. Others rarely cut three paragraphs overall.
Some months before I wrote my own first novel—of which there will be more later—I read a book which purported to tell how to write a novel. The author taught writing at one of America’s leading universities and had written a couple of well-received historical novels, and he had set out to tell the great audience of would-be novelists how to go and do likewise.
His method was a dilly. What you did