How to Complete a Novel?: Don’t Quit, and Find Your Through Lines, the Ones that Excite You

At a recent book event for Deadly Declarations at Park Road Books, someone asked me this question. How do you write a novel?

I laughed before answering the question, not because the question wasn’t a good question, but because it was a question whose answer cannot be summed up at a book event.

There are thousands upon thousands of books, articles, courses, conferences, and websites with information about how to write a novel and the same number of authors times ten who are imminently more qualified than me to deliver the answer. I chose to stay away from discussing the mechanics of how to write a novel and describe what helped me the most in completing my novel.

How to Write a Novel: It’s More Than Mechanics

In a previous blog post, I addressed the many things I did to learn how to write a novel. You can read that post HERE.

One of the things I said in that blog post was that if I had jumped in too soon to writing Deadly Declarations, I wouldn’t have had a chance to study the things I needed to study, to read the books I needed to read, and to listen to the wisdom of authors I interviewed on my podcast talk about their writing.

I failed to mention in that earlier blog post that after I learned enough about novel writing mechanics to get started, the hard work began. And much of that work is psychological.

Writing a Novel Can Be A Mind Game

It is one thing to learn the mechanics of how to write a novel, and quite another to complete a novel.

Writing a novel is hard work. It takes patience, endurance, discipline, and perseverance. There are plenty of opportunities to quit along the way. It is important to find ways not to quit.

Build Your Writing Community

One way not to quit writing a novel is to join writing organizations, critique groups, writer support groups, and the like, and make friends with other authors. It’s true: misery does love company.

Your doubts and frustrations are not your doubts and frustrations alone. Authors understand your desire to quit. They can offer helpful advice if you are stuck or an empathetic word when you are overwhelmed.

Writing organizations also provide helpful information and encouragement through newsletters and programming. I’ve found this to be true as a member of Charlotte Writer’s Club, Charlotte Center for Literary Arts, the North Carolina Writer’s Network, High Country Writers, Sister’s in Crime, Queen City Suspects, the Alliance of Independent Authors, and a Writer Support Group.

For more encouragement, you can also subscribe to newsletters, YouTube Channels, and podcasts where authors talk about their work and writers talk about the writing process.

Read Fiction   

Sometimes reading fiction can be discouraging for a writer, as in: “I will never be able to write like that.” That aside, the psychological positives tend to outweigh the negatives.

Reading can be both escape and education. Put down your manuscript from time to time and pick up a good book. Read books outside your genre and read books in your genre. When you do, you will enjoy the kind of stories you enjoy writing, find the kind of stories you might decide to write someday, and learn something about the process of writing both.

As the host of Charlotte Readers Podcast, I read more than 300 books in three years in a wide variety of genres. I saw how authors approached their stories in different ways. I learned a few tricks. And I even came to the conclusion that while I will never be confused with a literary fiction author, with hard work, I can play on the same field with many writers.

Ask Questions

The person at the book store who asked me the question about how to write a novel might one day be an author. Maybe their question was their first of many writing questions to come.

Asking questions is a fine way to connect to the writing process. You can ask questions about the craft of novel writing, but the better questions–the ones that will keep you writing your novel until “The End”–are the questions that stir your imagination.

Ask “what-if” questions and then spin a few probable answers that form additional questions.

I asked this question to find my way into Deadly Declarations: What if three retirees tried to solve the mystery of the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence, a controversial event in history that hasn’t been solved in over 250 years?

And what if a secret society with ties and loyalties to Thomas Jefferson wanted to keep a secret related to the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence?

And what if….

Find the Through Lines For Your Novel That Excite You

It wasn’t until I interviewed a non-fiction author named Scott Syfert on Charlotte Readers Podcast that I found the through line for my novel’s plot. Scott wrote a book titled: The First American Declaration of Independence? The Disputed History of the Mecklenburg Declaration of May 20, 1775. 

As a result of interviewing Scott and reading his book, I became fascinated with the many controversies surrounding the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence. Founding fathers John Adams and Thomas Jefferson argued about its existence in their letters to one another. And while Jefferson denied the existence of the Meck Dec, John Adams went so far as to tell a friend that he thought Jefferson had copied language from the Meck Dec in writing the United States Declaration of Independence one year later.

Being from Charlotte, I was intrigued by the story that Mecklenburg County was first to declare independence from Great Britain. It explained the date May 20, 1775 on the North Carolina state flag and the reason one North Carolina license plate says: “First in Freedom.”

I found the through line for my novel’s theme when I chose to set the novel in a retirement community. I put a lawyer in residence there who didn’t want to be there because I wanted to explore how he would handle the change and deal with his bias against retirement living, and how he would handle being pulled into a case against the big law firm that just fired him. I made him the reluctant hero in a legal thriller. What if he had to prove that the Meck Dec was nothing more than a fairy tale to win a case against his old firm? And what if the lawsuit lead him down a path to uncover the truth about the Meck Dec and endanger him in the process?

Because I enjoy humor in novels, setting the novel in a retirement community allowed me to explore the funny side of retirement living, the third rail of my through line.

Finding these through lines gave me the energy I needed to complete the first draft of the novel and the many rewrites that followed.

If you find yourself stuck in writing your novel, maybe you haven’t found all the through lines that excite you. Once you find them, the writing will pick up speed.

Revise, Take Breaks, and Revise Again

Completing a novel requires much more than writing a first draft. Some authors say writing is rewriting and there is some truth to that.

Rewriting allows an author to flesh out the five senses–sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch–and connect dots that weren’t connected.

Rewriting allows an author to reorder chapters, clarify scenes, cut sections that affect the pace or are redundant, and add missing pieces.

Throughout the writing process, I found it helpful to take breaks from the manuscript. At one point, I left it alone for an entire month while I waited on feedback and when I jumped back in, I was able to put new energy into the project.

Celebrate the Accomplishment

Writing a novel is a true challenge.

Not quitting long enough to see your novel published is a worthy goal and an accomplishment worth celebrating.