How Successful Novelists Take Notes
How Successful Novelists Take Notes
7 tips in honor of NaNoWriMo
It’s almost November, and that means it’s almost National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). On November 1st, hundreds of thousands of people will start working on their own novels and commit to writing 50,000 words by November 30th. If you are one of those people, let me offer some advice: spend some time with your notes.
Readers of this newsletter know that there is no single, perfect way to take notes. I certainly can’t offer a fool-proof strategy that will lead to a bestseller. But, I will say that almost every novel starts as notes. And most great novelists take a lot of notes.
So, here are 7 tips and suggested tasks I’ve gathered from successful novelists’ notebooks. I hope they offer some guidance as we approach the month of novel writing.
1) Do field research
The first thing Elizabeth George (the best-selling mystery writer) does when she sets out to write a novel is visit locations. Doing this kind of research allows George to “trick” herself into “believing that there is actually a recipe for novel writing.”
Moreover, this allows her to get a sense for the scenery and key locations that might inspire plot twists.
Pictures like this one helped George begin her novel, Careless in Red with the following description:
He found the body on the forty-third day of his walk. By then, the end of April had arrived, although he had only the vaguest idea of that... He’d started out when the only sign of life renewed was the promise of yellow buds on the gorse that grew sporadically along the cliff tops, but by April, the gorse was wild with color, and yellow archangel climbed in tight whorls along upright stems in hedgerows…
George also photographed a desolate cottage that would inspire a similar home in Careless in Red. You can see why these images were so generative. They just call out for a story to be told about them. Admittedly, George doesn’t always know how she will use an image, but, she explains,
I do know that because of its qualities or its specific details or its quirkiness or its unexpectedness, it will find a place in the narrative.
✔︎ To do: Take pictures of your novel’s setting and then write descriptions of those pictures. At the very least, you won’t have to face down a blank page.
2) Accumulate “slender ideas”
Do you have a journal? A notebook with observations? If the answer is yes, you already have “slender ideas.” In Plotting and Writing Suspense Fiction, Patricia Highsmith advises her readers:
Write down all these slender ideas. It is surprising how often one sentence, jotted in a notebook, leads immediately to a second sentence. A plot can develop as you write notes. Close the notebook and think about it for a few days — and then presto! you’re ready to write a short story.
You can read more about Highsmith’s notebooks here:
✔︎ To do: Read through your notebooks (maybe your planners, maybe even old school notebooks). Find phrases and descriptions that strike you as particularly novelistic. Try to add them to your location descriptions.
3) Save articles from newspapers
I’ve observed this technique in several mystery writers. Mary Higgins Clark, for example, will find inspiration in the news. She tells an interviewer how one particular story inspired the plot of her novel, We’ll Meet Again.
...I do cut out clippings and just throw them into one drawer. But I just found that one case profoundly interesting, and I knew that someday I would use it. I never use the entire true story—it's just a springboard for my ideas. In my book the woman actually accepts the blame for the crime, because she had been so traumatized that she did everything wrong, like leaving her fingerprints everywhere.
By contrast, Margaret Atwood uses newspaper clippings to back up her novels. The Handmaid’s Tale has become synonymous with a dark, dystopian, misogynist future— but, don’t call it science fiction. Everything Atwood included has already happened. And she has the newspaper clippings to prove it. “I’m not a prophet,”
she told The Guardian.
✔︎ To do: Scan your favorite newspaper or newsletter for plot points. See if they spark any more slender ideas.
4) Write affirmations in your notebook
At this point, you might need some encouragement. Take a page out of Octavia Butler’s notebook (she was the first science fiction writer to win a MacArthur). She filled the back of one of her notebooks with affirmations. Here are some examples:
I shall be a bestselling writer
This is my life. I write bestselling novels.
I will help poor black youngsters go to college.
I will get the best health care for my mother and myself.
My books will be read by millions of people! So be it! See to it!
✔︎ To Do: Get clear on your goals. Manifest your novel’s success.
5) Draw maps and sketch characters’ clothing
While preparing to write her Victorian bestsellers, George Eliot would sketch clothing like Hetty’s “straw hat trimmed with white” in Adam Bede.
She would also map out fictional locations (like Middlemarch).
Incidentally, Agatha Christie sometimes mapped out her murder scenes.
✔︎ To Do: Draw maps of your novel-world. Sketch pictures of the clothing your characters will wear.
6) Create an outline and then reorganize your scenes
If you’ve read anything about how to write a novel, you’ve probably heard about outlining. According to James Patterson, “The most common mistake that writers make, especially young writers, is they don't do an outline.”
But don't stop there, he advises, play with the outline. If the plot goes in one direction, see what happens if it goes the other way. What if x happens instead?The "queen of crime" also rearranged outlines. Agatha Christie rarely sat down with one devastating idea. Instead, she played with pinning the murder on different characters. She would also list a series of scenes and assign each a letter (A, B, C, and so on.)
Then, she would rearrange the scenes by simply rearranging the letters.
✔︎ To Do: Create an outline and then play around with it.
7) Destroy your notes
I don’t mean this literally, although you are, of course, free to burn your notes as Thomas Hardy did. I mean that you shouldn’t take your notes so seriously. No one will see them. (Unless, of course, you become really famous, in which case, please let me interview you!)
✔︎ To do: Don’t overthink your notes. They are a playground; they are not your novel.
Please take a moment to answer this poll. It will help me plan future posts.
I’d love to hear if you’re working on a novel this November. And, as always, hit the heart to let me know you enjoyed this post.
Till next week,
Jillian
George, Elizabeth. Mastering the Process: From Idea to Novel. Penguin, 2020, p.10.
George, p. 13.
George, p. 20.
Conversation With Mary Higgins Clark. https://www.writerswrite.com/journal/mary-higgins-clark-5001.
Allardice, Lisa. “Margaret Atwood: ‘I Am Not a Prophet. Science Fiction Is Really about Now.’” The Guardian, 20 Jan. 2018. The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/jan/20/margaret-atwood-i-am-not-a-prophet-science-fiction-is-about-now.
Eliot, George. Adam Bede. Penguin Classics, 1980, p. 252.
Curran, John. Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks: Fifty Years of Mysteries in the Making. Harper Collins, 2010, p.127
Patterson, James. “Outlines: Part 1.” MasterClass, https://www.masterclass.com/classes/james-patterson-teaches-writing/chapters/outlines.
Curran, p. 82.
I’m hoping (planning) to finish my novel in November, and good god, all the things I wish I’d known at the start! There’s a part of me that wants to stop right now, with a mere 10-15% to go, because I’m already keen to get into the revising stage, where I’ll start to correct a lot of the errors I’ve made. But I wish I’d made a map and definitely a better outline at the start. You live and you learn!
I loved your post. I’ve always wondered about how other authors took notes and then used them to develop their ideas ultimately turning them into a final finished work. I wonder if this idea of note taking is associated with the proliferation and the availability of affordable paper, notebooks and writing materials. Because one wonders if earlier writers such as Shakespeare or Dante took notes and created drafts of their works. And what about Homer, I’ve always wondered if perhaps ancient writers relied mainly on their memory. This is fascinating. And it would be interesting to look at certain notes and compare them to a final published passage side by side. Your work is very in-depth and it’s clear you have done extensive research and detailed investigative work.