Do you find yourself discussing your Novel during your coffee break?

Do you find yourself discussing your Novel during your coffee break?

BLOG SESSION

December 4th, 2017

Greetings Novelists, Authors, Writers, Aspiring Authors, Emerging Authors and all Blog Followers ~ We're here today to discuss a topic that many of you can probably relate to.  If you are a Writer and you have a desire to write the Novel that has been on your mind and in your heart, then this is the Blog Session for you!

Many Writers have their stories rolling around in their head.  Let it be known that the best way to get those stories out of your head is to discuss them, write your notes about your story, record your thoughts on a recorder, and/or type up your outline.

If you love Coffee Shops, then you may have found yourself inside with friends discussing your Novel.  Whenever you have time to have a coffee break, then you also have time to think about your Novel.

Coffee Time!

A good cup of coffee will get your story wheels turning.  If you are alone in a coffee shop, be sure to have your notepad, tablet, laptop, or smartphone handy.  And, yes, there are apps that you can put on your smartphone that will allow you to capture your Novel Notes.

And, since we're all here, let's take a sharp turn and let me share an amazing story that you may not have heard before ~  Many years back, there was a Japanese woman who wrote a Novel in a series of text messages on her cell phone while she commuted back and forth to work.  And, what's even more amazing about this story is that the print version of her Novel sold 400,000 copies in the year 2008.  She apparently was neither the first nor the last person to thumb novel-length entries in tiny increments.  These cell phone novels, called keitai shosetsu in Japanese, are incredibly popular and abundant.  Typically the stories are hard-core crime dramas or sordid love stories rife with disturbing subject matter such as rape, murder, love-triangles, illegitimate pregnancies, etc.  Can you believe that!?

Ok, well, these stories described above are primarily written and read by young women, but not exclusively so.  Novels are uploaded to sites where users can choose a genre or story and have it sent to their phones, one text at a time, or download sections to their eReaders.  In the US, textnovel.com is the first of these sort of sites.  Now, I personally do not know very much about the site nor this type of novel writing myself, but I am sure someone does of course, because the site exists.  I just happened to hear about it, and I thought I'd pass this information forward to you.

Noveling in this type of way must present special kinds of challenges.  First, you must be very organized and definitely have a firm grip on your story and its plot.  While you may have plenty of time between texts to get the next sentence perfectly right, you must also maintain a very controlled flow of information.  Each sentence that you write must be very strong.  I seriously can't imagine readers staying with a story that has a lot of fluffy detail if they have to read it one sentence at a time.  Stories written in this way require action and constant movement of plot and characters to keep it alive.  Which leads to this very important point -- the novels written in this way are typically high drama.

Novels that are slow or have too much exposition could not possibly be written in this text novel way.  To write a Cell Phone Novel, a Writer must actively move the plot forward with every word and waste no time on minor details.

Of course, there is always the old-fashioned way of writing all of your novel notes in your notepad or notebook by hand while you are at the coffee shop or in your home office . . .

Novelist being distracted by phone calls

The thing about writing your novel notes is that you must not be distracted by phone calls or other annoyances.  This is why you must set a certain amount of time aside to do your novel note writing.  While some of you may enjoy soft music while you write your novel notes, many other writers enjoy quiet -- yes, complete quiet.  Try to imagine complete quiet in this day and age -- complete quiet.  Oh, how nice that would be.

If you like getting together with your novel writing coffee buddies, then you may find yourself inside a coffee shop with your writing friends discussing your novel.  You may want to take this fine opportunity to discuss your novel in great detail.  You may want to tell your writing buddies about some of the characters in your story.  Find out their thoughts about the personalities of your characters.  See what they think about the plot.

Alright, now lets take a trio of coffee shop writers and place them in another welcoming, slightly open air and scenic environment . . .

Writing Buddies

This trio of Writers can work on their Novels together by sharing notes and thoughts about their scenes, plots, characters, and storylines.  You may have already tried this with your writing buddies, but if you haven't you may want to check this method out at some point and see how it works for you.

OUR NEXT BLOG SESSION:

Typing up your Novel

Until we meet again for our next exciting Blog Session ~

Peace, Love & Light

By René Allen

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