Writing My First Book

Writing a novel was like losing my virginity. I spent a large part of my life hoping I would do it, made a few false starts, and when I finally did it I realized it really wasn’t that difficult; and now I can’t wait to do it again. I will not extend the metaphor to actually publishing a book and getting paid for it; that would be creepy. My point is, if you’ve ever wanted to write a novel, go ahead and do it.

I am an unpublished author, so I’m hardly qualified to give much advice on writing a book. However, I think I have a few things to share, because unlike a lot of people who only talk about writing a book I actually did it; and I learned a few things along the way.

In my opinion there are three components to a novel – story, message and language. These things are fairly straightforward. The story is what happens in the book, e.g. man loses love of his life when he’s young because he’s poor, then sets out to become rich and claim his love, he succeeds but because of fate it all ends tragically. The message is the lesson or moral of the story, or maybe perfectly portraying a place and time for posterity, e.g. be careful of what you wish for, money can’t buy happiness, life is cruel, the ‘Roaring Twenties’, etc. The interesting thing about the message is that it can be left for the reader to determine regardless of what the author intends. Language is the actual words, sentences, paragraphs, and imagery the author employs. Great books, or dare I say ‘classics’, do all three very well, or ever just one or two of these things magnificently and do the other one or two well.

My book is called The Turtle Eggs, and it can be downloaded here from Scribd for free. I am working on finding an agent and a publisher, so if you enjoy the book please pass it along to your friends; and if you are in the publishing industry please offer me a big fat advance and 3-book deal! Here’s a description of the book.

They are the turtle eggs, thieves who stole vast fortunes from China’s booming Wild West economy and found refuge in the United States. Sean Lockhart, a black sheep from one of America’s most prominent families, a China hand, a businessman, and reluctant spy, is charged by two governments to help bring the Turtle Eggs to justice. Greed, betrayal and vengeance unfold from New York to Beijing and the steppes of Mongolia as Lockhart chases blood and treasure to right a terrible wrong.

I didn’t set out to write the great American (or Chinese) novel, I set my sights a lot lower. For me it was all about finally ‘doing it’. To simplify things a bit, I picked a genre and stuck to it, because by doing that you pretty much determine what kind of book you will write. Sure, I’d love to be able to write The Great Gatsby, but I wanted to start a project I could actually finish and be satisfied with. I was realistic enough not to swing for the fences my first time out.

I chose the ‘thriller’ genre, because that’s the kind of books I love to read and movies/TV shows I love to watch. After 30 years of books, TV shows and movies; from Johnny Quest to the Bourne series, I internalized the genre’s form from osmosis. If you want to be a good writer, then you must be a great reader. Study books, films and TV shows in the genre. If you want to write a spy novel (usually a sub-genre of a thriller) then you sure as hell better know what kind of car 007 drove and what kind of gun her carried – more often than not an Aston-Martin and a Walther PPK.

Novels that fit neatly into a genre are almost always all about telling a story. The language needs to be just good enough to carry the story and the message is frequently secondary. In general, thrillers are fast moving, so they use punchy language, and usually the message or moral of the story is ‘good triumphs over evil’.

So when I set out to write a thriller I concentrated on the story; I wanted to write a ‘ripping good yarn’ or a ‘romp’. I crafted a storyline; i.e. what happens first, second, third… until ‘The End’. This is the most important step, if you have ever told a story in your life, then you know it has a beginning, middle and end. If you are not too familiar with this and need to know more, I suggest you study the story arc and know it well. If you break from this format, you might produce something interesting and exciting, but more likely you will write yourself into circles and confuse readers.

After you create your story line, populate your story with characters. These are the active people that actually do things in your story. I have no great wisdom to share about creating characters; in fact I probably have a lot to learn. But with a thriller it’s kind of obvious what kinds of characters need to be involved, the hero, the damsel in distress (or someone else who needs protection), the villain(s), and a whole bunch of supporting characters that either help or obstruct the hero and villain, i.e. sidekicks, mentors, allies, henchmen, etc. And of course, never forget to include a heroine, femme fatale, or tart for strictly prurient interest; thrillers should have some gratuitous sex as well as violence.

A thriller by definition should move as fast as possible; otherwise no one is thrilled. So when I wrote my book, I wrote short chapters and I tried to end each one with a hook to the next chapter so I cold create a ‘page turner’. If you need to study this technique I suggest you read Alexander Dumas’ The Three Musketeers; it’s a long adventure story originally published in serial form in a magazine. Dumas got paid by the word as his story was printed issue after issue; therefore he really need to keep is readers on the edge of their seats so they would ‘tune in’ for the next chapter. By the way, Dumas became extraordinary wealthy because he was great at doing this.

This reminds me, having a few good influences is important; we should all study from the masters. When creating the characters and the story my main inspirations were Magnum PI and Fletch because I wanted my protagonist to be a slacker and a wise ass. I then drew from a few authors for writing style, Dan Brown and John Grisham for fast-paced conspiracy stories, and Carl Hiaasen and Elmore Leonard for quirky characters, snazzy dialogue and gritty violence.

Of course, I was also inspired by living in China, which I is the backdrop of my story. Also, while my life in Beijing is not nearly as interesting as my protagonist’s, nor do I want it to be, I also drew a lot from my own life in order to personalize the main character and include a lot of small details that I hope add flavor to the story.

It took me about two years to write, 2008 was the busiest year of my professional life, but 2009 wasn’t - hurray for recession! During both years finding the time to write wasn’t hard because I truly enjoyed the process. I usually wrote in the mornings before work and the weekends. My writing sessions last anywhere between 30 minutes to 4 hours, and I usually edited what I wrote over the last day or two and before writing a couple of pages. I found it useful to keep of log of how much I wrote on a weekly basis and after several months I reached a target of about 30 pages a month.

Like blogging or my work as PR consultant, writing a novel was a regular exercise in stretching my imagination and playing with words while maintaining discipline of serving a final goal – completing the story. One of the most important lessons I learned was I got better at writing the more I did it; because of this the second half of the book was much better than the first. This lesson prompted me to rewrite huge parts of the first 150 pages.

It is important not to fall in love with your writing; this prevents much need editing from being accomplished. An important lesson I learned was how to take criticism on my work. This is a fine balance of throwing my ego out the window but also sticking to my guns when something was important to me. I am grateful for all the advice I got from friends and family that read the book, but I did not make every suggested change.

I think this is all I have to offer on the subject of novel writing. If you ever wanted to write a book I can’t recommend it enough. I do hope I get published and even get some money for my efforts; that really would be a dream come true. But no matter what, writing and finishing The Turtle Eggs was a rewarding experience just by itself and I will write another one.