A Member's Story.

Adam Langley spent his youth reading books such as the Animorphs series by K.A. Applegate and wondering why so many people wanted to go to Hogwarts when they had the Xavier School for Gifted Youngsters as an option. Adam has been published on several websites including SyFyWire and Jay and Miles X-Plain the X-Men.

He has attempted to write a fantasy novel five times. Then he found The Novelry and his fantasy became a reality. He took The Classic Course, one of our novel writing courses, and wrote his novel using The Ninety Day Novel course.

The Blue Disks of Michaelmas is his first finished novel. It's 89,950 words long.

Here's Adam on the reality of writing his fantasy novel with a day job.

“

I think all writers, especially writers of science fiction and fantasy, like to plan. We like our extended universes. We like giving our characters more room to move and grow and do stuff that is interesting. The problem arises when we spend more time...

If a novel is one person's moral journey towards acceptance of their place in the universe, then the plot is contrived to give them a gift or gifts to help them on their way to which he or she is particularly ill-suited.

Nail those  - the human flaw and the perfectly unsuitable circumstances  - and you've got the essential irony that powers a novel.

A disaster story brings these into sharp dramatic relief. As one of my writers pointed out this week, the hero of the Jaws movie is afraid of water.

But there's more -  it's not the flaw that's so important in the grand scheme of a disaster story, so much as the hero or heroine's gift.

The narrative path as outlined in The Five F's of story at The Novelry, finds its immaculately opposite form in a disaster story. The negative image. Perhaps that's not surprising, for is a novel is propelled by what the main character wants, in a disaster story it's all about what they don't want to happen.

The starting...

Welcome to the world's online writing group for serious novelists. From Alaska to Adelaide! We've got each other's back. Live 24/7 support. Join us when you sign up for any of our wonderful novel writing courses. We're the finishing school for aspiring fiction authors.

 

1.

 

2.

 

3.

 

4.

 

5.

 

6.

 

7.

 

8.

 

9.

 

10.

 

11.

 

12.

 

13.

 

14.

 

15.

 

16.

 

17.

 

18.

 

19.

 

20.

 

21.

 

22.

 

23.

 

24.

 

25.

 

26.

 

27.

 

28.

 

29.

 

30.

 

31.

 

32.

 

33.

...

The Novelry is delighted to announce that one of our beloved writers in on the longlist for this year's Bath Novel Award.

There's a whole lot of whooping going on for this much-loved writer who wrote her wonderful very moving novel with us on our creative writing courses.

Every novel presents such new challenges, it seems one has never written a novel before. An irksome and bewildering amnesia. Yet again,  your judgement and taste exceed your abilities and you're the duffer who won't repeat old ways any which way. But there is hope.

"I think it’s true that with each new book, you make new mistakes... .You start off with different possible tonalities and the right one only gradually comes into play.... As you get older, you understand time, you understand fictional time better, how to move in time, how to move through time in fiction.... Updike, in his later work, he got very good, and canny and clever about time. So we do learn some new tricks." Julian Barnes.

So, it may take longer, this new novel of yours, than the last. Let it.

I write, probably like you do, because life is a lonely path, but paradoxically we are all differently and diversely the same. Our most common, most tragic flaw as a species is perhaps...

The Telegraph 10th June 2019.

"Marshwood Manor in the Vale of Marshwood, close to Bridport and Dorset’s Jurassic coast, is the venue for a series of writing retreats. A week-long novel-writing course includes an inspirational mix of morning lessons, one-to-one sessions and after-dinner readings, plus plenty of free time for personal reflection and composition. Guests are allocated their own private rooms in shared cottages, situated in the 13 acres of garden and woodland which surround the house. "

The Full English Novel Writing Course from £975 for seven nights half-board. The Novelry.

"It really is a very odd business that all of us, to varying degrees, have music in our heads." Oliver Sacks.

In Musicophilia, Sacks tells some very moving stories about those with terrifyingly profound amnesia, or Alzheimer's disease, for whom music can "restore them to themselves".  He claimed that music may be our best medicine.

I've often wondered about the connection between music and writing. Many of my writers use music, as do I, to enter the right mood for a piece of prose.

Oliver Sacks described as "amusic", those who do not seem to understand or feel music at all in his book Musicophilia. He considered with pity the case of Vladimir Nabokov, who famously said he experienced music merely as "an arbitrary succession of more or less irritating sounds"; and he wondered about how little music is mentioned in Henry James's work.

What are the mysterious connections between the two arts?

If there's an order of merit, many writers would accord first place...

You have the time to write your novel.

Get cracking! The Novelry is a hive of activity designed to support, encourage and cheer writers who are writing.

Up with a coffee at early light, creating your world, at play before real life kicks in! You're creating something that will last, and speak for you and your lifetime in one hour a day. Whatever stage you're at - whether you've got no idea for your novel or you've got a first draft sitting in a drawer - you'll have a manuscript in your hands in ninety days' time.

Our one hour a day method for writing the first draft of your novel is not a gimmick or a sop to busy people as I explain in the video with this blog post above.

You need to do 23 times more back-of-mind cogitation than you do writing when you embark upon the hard work of formulating a novel at first draft.

The time between writing session is vital and will allow you to go to the page to write with refreshed and renewed purpose.

If you don't fly off and write...

Each and every character in a story has a single purpose for the storyteller - and that is their role or agency vis a vis the moral development of the protagonist, hero or heroine, the subject of your novel. They either assist or hinder.

There are filler characters, the door holders, and bag carriers, the petrol pump attendants, and these too may have something to add, but you need to concern yourself with the team first and foremost. Some 3-15 players.

Wherever you are in your novel, you should be looking at the crucible - the hell Sartre might have dubbed it or heaven - that is the nexus of relationships. What people want from your main player and what he or she wants from them. The relationships - the push and pull of their reciprocal wants and needs - will range from highly negative and reversing (antagonist) to assistance, affection, love and self-sacrifice (the friend or lover).

So you'll be playing these out in your story through conflict and clarification - questions posed...

Wherever you are with your writing a novel, here's something which could help you see the big picture of plot fast. 

On my fourth draft of a novel, and so mired in the material, I needed a very simple oversight of the drama in play. It came to me that when I am working on a novel I envision several key scenes and work from one to the other hopping on one foot of my purple prose.

Usually, I begin a novel with a key 'visual' or vision, a scene that intrigues me, and work out how on earth it all came about, then I add other scenes. But of course, I forget about the simplicity of that and get bogged down in detail.

At any stage of your novel try seeing it like a moving picture. Think of it as a movie, and press fast forward x 30. You won't be paying attention to the talking heads but the space around them. The locations. The sets. The camera angles and then the key shot for each. Whose face? Whose feet? What object?

My God it helps. 

This week I've been using a...