how to write a novel the holistic way
- Teresita "Angela" Terga
- May 16
- 15 min read
LEARN HOW TO WRITE A NOVEL
THE HOLISTIC WAY
For many people, writing a novel is a lifelong dream. This Holistic Guide to Writing a Novel will help you gain the confidence and motivation you need to self-propel your writing and publishing goals. Learning how to write a novel the holistic way means you will write first-hand and, through your own creativity, discover that you already have what it takes to be an author.
On a scale of 1 to 10, where 10 is very satisfied and 1 is not satisfying at all, how would you rate your interest in becoming a published author? Let us know.
Writing a novel is easy if you just let go of the resistance and allow your innate storytelling talent to manifest. Many would agree that reading a book is like living vicariously. In an alternate reality where feelings, thoughts, and conflicting ideas clash and spin into consequential events, the witness is the reader. Empathy develops in readers; read more here.
When adopting the Holistic Guide to Writing a Novel, you will need a journal and a pen to take notes and write your thoughts on writing. Taking you through the journey will be a veteran writing coach who has taught writing composition at EVERY academic level, focusing on intermediate, with most of the 22 years spent teaching from writing models. This guide includes book links useful for understanding and diving deeper into the novel-writing process.
But a book alone will not give you the support you need. Simply put, a writing coach will help you get the most out of learning how to write a novel. Whether you’re writing Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, Memoirs, Biography, Romance, Self-Help, Drama, Kids’ Books, YA, Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Mystery, Magical Realism, Religious, Informational, and the list goes on and on, this guide focuses on the writing of any type of novel. Styles, genres, and subgenres will crossover many times. You can decide what your genre and style are once you have written your first draft.
Writing your own novel and publishing and marketing your book has never been more accessible to everyone, regardless of educational level and financial status. A great writer can be anyone who has the talent to tell a story creatively. But a successful writer will be one who has the know-how, thus able to manipulate the rules to suit a unique style.
The satisfaction of being a published author and delivering your novel to eternity is priceless. To those who have a strong desire to experience this satisfaction and are closer to a 10 in the above ranking survey, good luck; you are starting the journey of a writer.
Come along!
With the Holistic Guide to Writing a Novel, you will learn to handle the mechanics of writing, discover how to develop your unique way of writing, and be able to identify and change your plot points as you write and rewrite.
After you have written your first draft, you will take apart its elements from the position of a reader. The result will be learning how to structure a novel, your novel, as you write it. You will determine the readability of your manuscript and discover your way of writing, grammatically speaking. From there, you will be able to make adjustments and improve your style.
Relax, you won’t have to worry about the readability and style of your manuscript until you complete your first draft.
After writing your first draft, you will be ready to make decisions about your audience, the style or genre of your novel, the rewriting goals, and the editing process. Keep in mind that Publishing and Marketing are part of the novel-writing process, too.
You will receive step-by-step instructions for writing, publishing, and marketing your book in this guide. But you alone will have to make the final choices on genre and style and stick to them.
This Holistic Guide to Writing a Novel is flexible; it allows the artistic development of organic storytelling styles of novel writing to manifest.
What is stopping you from writing your book?
Are you one of millions of people who want to write and publish a book but is afraid to ask how?
Perhaps you think writing a novel is too hard and publishing too expensive.
These are typical questions you could ask when entertaining the idea of writing a book becomes an obsession. Some call it a need. It feels as if you have been programmed to write. So, you could and should.
You’re not alone. There is help. Dedicated writing coaches like CAMP's own who not only have the education but also the expertise acquired during years of creating stories for theatre, film, text, and illustration, plus years of SEO copywriting. The relationship between art and commerce makes it ready to publish, premiere, open, launch.
Relax and enjoy the discovery of your writer self. Let story tell itself.
Writing a novel can be most daunting. Your attempts at first may be working til drop, or whatever suits your author-self best without a clear path.
Beyond the horror that entails telling a story poorly, there is no light at the end of the tunnel: Publishing will be as obscure as telling the story. And beyond publishing, the challenge of marketing rises in the horizon like the monolith that it is.
In the hell of writing a book, you may have mechanically linked words into phrases showing settings where character-to-character actions take place and have consequences throughout the arc of the story. As if that isn’t wow enough, the best is yet to come.
Hold on to your seats and open you purse, folks. Here comes good ole dollar marching through!
Marketing can be like a mysterious code that you must crack to receive the bestseller god’s blessings.
Since even the best writer can be totally ignored by its generation, and stories are for sharing, getting your book in front of millions depends on following these easy novel writing steps.
So, don’t put it off until tomorrow or until you retire. Stop saying, “one day” when today is the day every single day.
After all, there’s help. And it doesn’t have to break your bank. Writing coaches are waiting to mentor you and make you the author and creator of your unique voice.
How to Write a Novel Step by step.
Story is King
Author of Story, Robert McKee, one of the most celebrated Hollywood writing coaches, talks about the importance of doing what is right for you as a creator.
What is Story but a tale that can be told many times over from different perspectives and retain its essence? From generation to generation a tale becomes a legend. The story can be retold many times over by one after another storyteller, and one adaptation to another. But the story remains undisturbed, and unique.
How many legendary stories can you think of? Lady Godiva, Robin Hood, Atlantis, Fountain of Youth, Bloody Mary, El Dorado, King Arthur, El Zorro, Yamashita’s Treasure, The Gordian Knot, and Prester John, are ten legendary stories examples to inspire you and illustrate the concept. Have you created your own legend, yet?
You must have a room, or a certain hour or so a day, where you don’t know what was in the newspapers that morning, you don’t know who your friends are, you don’t know what you owe anybody, you don’t know what anybody owes to you. This is a place where you can simply experience and bring forth what you are and what you might be. This is the place of creative incubation. At first you may find that nothing happens there. But if you have a sacred place and use it, something eventually will happen.” |
Step 1- Discover the writer within
In your journal, label a section “Writing a novel meditations” and sit before and after you write for a few minutes to think about what just took place within you as you compose your novel. Write down your thoughts.
Make sure to disengage from the good opinion of others. Don’t need anyone’s opinion on your writing right now. Only you matter and your writing coach guidance in the process of writing a novel your taking matters into your own hands. You’re the writer and creator. Have you told anyone the story yet? You can, you should, but only if you can tell your story in under 3 minutes.
Write a logline
Devise the logline for your story. Write a brief summary of no more than 150 words. Read it aloud. Does it answer the question “Who wanted what but?”
Throughout your life as an author you will need to have many ready-made answers to the question, “What is your story about?” These elevator pitches, as they call them, are no more than 1-3 minutes long. Always include the protagonist and antagonist in your answer. See how fast you can say the gist of the story.
Write a short story
In 3 to 5 pages or so, tell the story and create the sort story tied to your novel..
Spend as much time as you need but not more than a week. This storytelling exercise should answer the question, what is your story about?
Sit back and listen to your short story. Have someone read it aloud to you.
However, when you start writing your novel you won’t need to think about the number of pages or how many words you will write; don’t fret with grammar, either. Don’t think, just write. Do you see the story in your mind? Tell the story as it comes up, from the depth of your imagination. You don’t have to write every word. You can record your voice and transcribe with an App.
A good transcribing app can help you get the most out of time if you’re not a fast typist. Download a transcription app like this one.
Step 2- Plot development
Before going any further, write your thoughts in your journal under the writing a novel meditation tab you created. How has writing a logline and a short story 3-5 pages long help you write, think about writing, and keep writing?
Now start picking out the 5 Ws of your story so you can expand it. Answer these questions in your journal.
1. Who are the characters?
2. Describe the characters one by one. What is their past?
3. What does each character want?
4. Why do they want what they want?
5. In which way do characters relate to one another?
6. What is the main problem in the story?
7. What are the secondary and tertiary problems in the story?
8. What do the characters do and want to do about these problems?
9. When does the story take place?
10. Explain the time period’s music?
11. What was the economy like?
12. What kind of social momentum, or trends were present?
13. What special historical significance takes place?
14. Where is the action taking place at?
15. Rural or urban?
16. Interior or exterior?
17. Why did the characters do what they did?
18. How did the characters solve the problems?
19. Which problems were not solved?
20. Why was it important to solve these problems?
Congratulations! You have created a world full of other worlds. Each character is a world and a journey.
After answering these questions about your Story, you have arrived at “Story.” You should have a beginning middle and end, an inciting accident, a call to action, the journey of a thousand miles, and the obstacles that stand in the way but steppingstones to the end. You made it to the first stage of the writer’s journey, but there will be more consequences to adjust.
Create a new set of questions and answers until there is nothing left to chance.
Meet with your writing coach to discuss steps one and two. Congratulations, you have created the plot and developed the matrix of your novel.
Step 3- Plan your chapters and research
Your writing coach will provide guidance to help you nail this part of writing a novel so you can rewrite.
You may be closer than you think to writing your novel. Let’s look at the mechanics of novel writing, now.
A novel is the longest form of narrative fiction there is. It is divided into chapters. Every novel regardless of how many chapters it has, organically contains a beginning middle and end. You can pick out the sequence of events after reading a story or watching a movie, right?
Once you know the organic sequence and the development of the plot you are ready to construct your novel using segments.
Segment: These segments are your chapters. Give each segment a title according to the main problem-solution and sequence contained in each one. The title should reveal something special about the events and feelings in the chapter.
Time sequence: You can skip around from beginning to end to middle as you like. Nobody likes a linear story anymore. Explore different sequences of events. Come to a consensus. Write the outline.
Under each segment title write the part of the outline that it contains.
Step 4 – Write
You can write each chapter separately if you’d like. You can start at the end and work your story to the beginning chapters. Or place the ending towards the start of the book and work backwards. You can go in and out of time sequences as you like. It’s your story.
A writing coach can help you learn how to write a novel but can never teach you how to tell your own story. At this point you can start to time yourself and predict outcoimes. For example, sit down to write for two hours. How many pages did you cover? How many hours would it take you to write 300 pages at that rate?
Take all the time you need but don’t stop until you finish your first draft.
Step 5 – The Metacognition of learning how to write a novel
Listen to your story. Have someone read it to you. You have written every chapter. You have described places and people. Characters have talked to themselves and others. Actions have taken place. You have narrated a series of events and their consequences.
You are already an author if you have made it this far. Can you pick out where the first Act starts and ends, the second Act starts and ends, and the third Act starts and ends? Can you explain how each character has changed during the story journey?
By reading and listening to your story aloud you will start to see it from a third person perspective. You are no longer the writer but the witness.
Your writing coach will be very instrumental here in helping you detach from your creation so you can enjoy it from afar. This exercise will also help you see what is missing. What needs to be changed or developed further. The possibilities are endless for your story.
Use your
The Three Act Structure
Every Act has its own beginning and end and stands alone. . Writing a novel is like building a house and then furnishing it. Finally, the day comes when the house is a world apart.
A novel is not like a play, divided into Acts but chapters. Different chapters can contain parts of different Acts. It can be non-linear. But the Acts make up the story, are present throughout the chapters, and like a jigsaw puzzle, the reader’s mind puts them together. Thus, a novel is a reading experience that is unique to each reader.
Act I
What is an Act? Let’s get literary for a while. You are analyzing the elements of your narrative. An act is an organic chunk of the life that happens at the beginning of a story. Every first Act has an inciting incident, or something happens that spurs the next Act. A problem must arise. There must be a desire to achieve and end. But Act I lays the foundation for the construction of every story
The first Act ends after the inciting incident and the call to action. The second Act contains the journey mishaps and friends show up along the way who can help and distract, but nonetheless move the action along the railway to the climactic end.
Conflict made the character break. The top of the roof is blown out. There will be no more attempts made. It’s now or never. It came to that. The worst has come to be. It solves a problem for better or worse. These climactic passages build up until the glass overflows and spills. The end is near.
Happy endings or cliff hangers, sad endings or life-as-usual before the inciting incident occurred. These developments each can be tested and replaced with another just for fun. Ask yourself what would happen if? Listen to new ideations that pop up in your head.
What is the climactic moment? Where is it located within the narrative and how do you know?
Continue to dissect your draft, your real first novel draft.
You see, every Act has its own climactic moment that serves as a new inciting incident that propels the next Act’s events and consequences. But in the 3rd Act is where sh*t hits the fan and sprays it over the story from the beginning. The action that is prompted from the 3rd Act’s climax is the end to that conflict that started in the 1st Act.
Resolution
In the , characters will have changed, and there’s a resting place where the action no longer takes place.
More literary terms such as protagonist, antagonist and other character alignments will be shared with you next.
Joseph Campbell taught us how to see ourselves reflected in each other’s myths. Every myth is a story like no other but is inheritently the same story of the overcomer. Beyond the Hero’s faces and the Hero’s journey is the writer’s journey, a metaphor for writing a novel and living your best life, the life of a hero.
By Christopher Vogler (2007)
Influenced by Joseph Campbell’s works. This is a guide for writers to understand that the storytelling holistically follows the narrative of mythological heroes who, thrown into cataclysmic adventures, must overcome the perils of the crises before them. Universal archetypes serve dramatic functions along the journey to its culminations by posing as mentors, guardians, shapeshifters, the shadows and tricksters.
By Joseph Campbell (1949) Revolutionary in its understanding of comparative mythology, this book offers an outline of the hero’s journey for artists who continue to be inspired by the universal mythical traditional patterns of world creation and destruction.
By Joseph Campbell (1990) The collected works of the greatest mythologist of all times incudes conversations with famous people he inspired and their reflections on the power of myth in our lives and our society.
Writers can find inspiration in these books to help them craft their stories.
Readability is the key to your audience
Did you know most books are written at mid readability level? There’s a reason for that. Your readers will get through your novel easier and quicker. Readability has nothing to do with the depth of the content. A low readability can have very high complexity. As a matter of fact, a genius writer can describe and narrate the most complex thoughts and actions in easy-to-understand readability. It takes time to develop the craft of writing.
The Most Common Readability Scores Are Those Between 1 and 100. For Example:
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Relax, you won’t have to worry about the readability of your manuscript until you complete your first draft. There is a simple way to determine readability and of making adjustments to it.
After writing your first draft you will be ready to make decisions about your audience, the style or genre of your novel, the rewriting goals, and the editing process. Keep in mind that Publishing and Marketing are part of the novel writing process, too.
You will receive step by step instructions for writing, publishing, and marketing your book in this guide. But you alone will have to make the final choices on genre and style and stick to them.
This Holistic Guide to Writing a Novel is flexible; it allows the artistic development of organic storytelling styles of novel writing to manifest.
Editing and Proofreading the First Draft
After this paramount accomplishment of writing a novel’s first draft, you are only halfway through the process of writing anovel, or less. Next, you will need to analyze the writing of your manuscript by sentence structure, vocabulary, tone, and readability. To do so, one simple way is to subscribe to a tool that checks all this for you.
Grammarly is the preferred writing companion for many writers. It has a free subscription but to get the most out of it, you will need to pay.
Grammarly Plans | Prices 2021 |
| $0 (Free) |
Grammarly Premium | $11.66 per month (Billed Annually) |
Grammarly Business | $62.50 per month for 3 members (Billed Annually) |
Grammarly won’t help a novelist with all the elements of literature that fiction entails. But it will provide some insights into your writing that will open your eyes to your style and help you make it perfect for you. Every writer has a style and yours must be found like a rough diamond that needs to be polished. You must be brave and select your style. You must then consistently follow it/
Overused words -
Passive verbs -
Excessive use of adverbs -
Excessive sentence length -
Vague words -
Repeated phrases -
Spelling and hyphenation consistency -
Alliterations -
Metaphors -
Similes -
Foreshadowing -
Character insights -
Settings descriptions –
Dialogue –
Vocabulary
Fry’s readability formula is one of the easiests to apply withoutthe need of an app. Just choose three different pages in your manuscript from the beginning middle and end. Count 100 words from anywhere in the page from the beginning of a sentence. Next, count the number of sentences and the number of syllables in the same 100 words. Add them all together and divide by 3 (the number of passages selected.
Finally turn to Fry’s readability graph and find your grade level.
Let’s talk about genre
In what category does your novel fit? Cross genre novels are common. Many fantasy novels are also coming of age, since both genres are favorites of Young Adult literature. You know, growing up and growing old have many inherent lessons. Fantasy is sometimes rooted in reality, magical realism is a style sometimes hard to pin. Sci-fi must have some scientific basis but fantasu can conjure up its own magic. A
Here are the genres described for you with their identifying elements.
Which genres does your draft fit in best, and how many characteristics of each does it sport?
What is a genre? The term refers to any category of creative work in literature and entertainment that is based on specific criteria.
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