The Fastest Way to Write Your Book

by Dave Haslett

  A sense of purpose

  Why are you writing this story? Hopefully it’s because a burning sense of passion is driving you to write it. But underneath all of that, your story should also have a purpose:

  to entertain your readers

  to move them emotionally

  to educate, inform or persuade them

  and so on

  See if you can work out what your story’s purpose is, and write it down before you begin the writing phase. Then, whenever you get stuck or don’t know which way the story should go next, check your statement of purpose for an instant reminder of what you’re trying to achieve.

  This is your life

  Writing your novel will be easier and faster if you include elements of your own life story and experiences. If a character suffers pain in your story, for example, recall a time when you were in pain and describe how it felt. Write it straight from the heart and the feelings should come across as authentic. You shouldn’t need to make it up or do any research.

  Your characters might share some of your background and personal history too. Again, it’s much faster to do this than to spend time making it up. Share as much or as little of your life as you’re comfortable with. Your main character might be a writer like you, while the villain shares your love of art or classical music. Your hero’s best friend might share your passion for wine or real ale. The detective who investigates the case might have an encyclopaedic knowledge of fridge magnets and a huge collection of them – just like you.

  If you don’t want to reveal too much about yourself, alter your characters’ backgrounds so they’re based on yours, but not exactly the same.

  What memories do you have of the people, places, events and feelings that shaped your life? What were the key turning points and small details that made you who you are today? Give your characters some of those things too – or similar ones.

  Your story could include events from your dreams and nightmares too. Or your characters might have the same dreams and nightmares as you do.

  Use dreams sparingly. Some writers refuse to use them at all because it feels like cheating. (But we’re all in favour of cheating because it gets faster results – as we’ll see later in the book.)

  Everything that happens in your story should be there for a reason, including your characters’ dreams. Perhaps a dream causes one of your characters to have a startling revelation, or maybe it provides a solution to one of his biggest problems.

  Don’t overdo this or go too far though, because your readers will find it unbelievable. I would only include one dream per book. The solution to the big crisis at the end of the story should never come from a dream.

  Neither the story nor any of its key events should ever turn out to have been “just a dream”. Readers hate that sort of thing.

  Creating a character from your memories

  What (or who) did you want to be when you were growing up?

  What were you most scared of as a child?

  What are you most scared of now?

  What did you wish for then, and what do you wish for now? What else have you wished for throughout your life?

  What are the biggest mistakes you’ve made?

  What are your biggest regrets?

  Think about the times when you failed. Did anyone else know you failed, or did you manage to get away with it or hide it? How did you feel about it at the time, and how do you feel about it now?

  What lies have you told, and why? What effect did they have? What would have happened if you’d told the truth? What would happen if you revealed the truth now?

  What makes you cringe with embarrassment?

  What was the bravest thing you ever did? What was the most cowardly thing you ever did?

  Who have you loved and who have you hated? Why? Did love ever turn into hate or dislike? Did hate or dislike ever turn into love?

  What have you felt passionate about? You should be able to think of several things here. Did the level of passion change over time? What do you feel passionate about now? Can you think of anything that you might feel passionate about in the future? We’ll look at passion again later in this chapter.

  Speeding things up

  If you’re writing an action-packed scene, the story and dialogue need to speed up. Here are some tips that should help make this easier:

  Focus on the current action and forget about everything else for now. If armed villains are chasing your hero, his only concern will be getting away. He won’t be wondering whether his brother’s house sale went through on time. He will be wondering whether that steel door up ahead of him is locked, and whether that rusted fire escape will take his weight.

  Imagine you’re filming the action with a video camera. Show the fine details in close-up: the sweat on your hero’s forehead, anxious glances in the rear-view mirror, his frantic pounding on the horn when his escape route is blocked by traffic, the low fuel warning light suddenly coming on, and so on. Everything else is just a blur. If your hero doesn’t notice it or pay any attention to it, and it isn’t important to the story, then don’t mention it.

  Keep your sentences short, and stick to just nouns and verbs. Make the nouns and verbs as specific and vivid as possible and leave out the adverbs and adjectives.

  To speed up the dialogue, don’t mention what the characters are doing as they speak. The way they speak – probably rapidly and urgently – should be obvious from the context, so you shouldn’t need to mention that either.

  Stick to the point. The characters need to exchange facts as quickly as possible and start formulating a plan. They won’t have time to reminisce about a similar case they were involved in years ago. They can do that some other time.

  Start in the middle of the conversation and get straight to the point. Leave out the beginning where the characters introduce themselves. End the scene as quickly as possible too. That might mean cutting off the end of the dialogue. Perhaps the hero dashes from the room when he has all the information he needs. Perhaps he yells his thanks and heads off to continue his adventure. Or perhaps you simply end the scene or chapter at that point.

  Your hero might have headed off a little prematurely, of course. Perhaps the other person was just about to give him a vital piece of extra information. He might say it anyway: your readers might hear him say it to an empty room, but your hero missed it. Your readers now know things won’t go to plan, which creates a terrific sense of anticipation and foreboding.

  When someone is speaking quickly, worrying about other matters, and only half-listening to what’s being said, things can get confused and misunderstood. People talk at cross-purposes, use the wrong words, or fail to make their meaning clear. Later, when things have gone terribly wrong, or he reaches a dead end, our hero might rerun the conversation through his head and realise what the other person actually meant. Now he knows what he has to do – but there isn’t much time left.

  Slowing things down

  To slow down the action, take the time to describe the surroundings. As before, imagine that you’re filming the scene, but this time you’re taking panoramic and group shots rather than extreme close-ups.

  Use longer sentences, and include a few descriptive adjectives and adverbs.

  Let the characters look around, think about other things, and catch up on other events. They can also analyse – and argue about – where they went wrong, and make new plans.

  Include a love scene, or the events that will lead to one.

  To slow down the dialogue, include the entire conversation from the beginning when the characters meet or pick up the phone, right through to the end when they say goodbye.

  Let the characters talk around the point and discuss other issues, reminisce about previous adventures, tell jokes, and so on. But these seemingly pointless conversations must still be there for a reason. For example, they might:

  convey extra information

  reveal something about a character or emphasise an aspect of his personalityr />
  contain clues or red herrings

  begin a plot thread that will become significant later

  Common sense(s)

  As you write your novel, keep the five primary senses in mind: sight, sound, touch, taste and smell. They can add a huge amount of realism to each scene. Many writers concentrate on sights and sounds but forget about the other three. The best writers use all five.

  Also think about the best ways of using each of them: don’t just name a string of colours or smells. What do things actually look like if you pay close attention to them? If there are several smells, just describe the one or two that are strongest, otherwise it can get a bit overpowering. What other sounds are there, apart from the people talking?

  Don’t overdo it. A light touch is all you need: one or two specific adjectives here and there. And don’t try to use all five senses in every scene.

  A matter of life and death

  If you think your story is too dull, raise the stakes. Turn it into a story of survival – either your main character’s or someone he cares about. If their life is at stake, most people will fight like fury to save themselves. They’ll do whatever it takes to avoid death.

  Death, in this sense, doesn’t necessarily mean the end of the character’s life though. If he fails in his quest, it might mean the death of his reputation or career. He might lose his most-treasured possessions. Or he might lose all faith in himself, and his life might fall apart. That could, in turn, lead to his actual death, unless he turns his life around or someone comes to his rescue.

  What else matters to him as much as his own life? What matters more than his life? How might it be put at risk? What will he do to save it?

  Even if your novel is about something (seemingly) gentle, like a knitting circle, reading group, walking club, or writers’ retreat, you could turn it into a matter of life or death. Again, that doesn’t (necessarily) mean any of the characters will get killed. Your main character might knit because it’s her life. She might have a sticker on her car that says: Born to knit. As far as she’s concerned, if she can’t knit she might as well be dead. So in this story you could prevent her from being able to knit, and see what she does about it. You can bet she’s going to put up a heck of a fight!

  Essential writing skills

  We noted earlier that in order to write novels quickly you need absolute confidence in your writing. That means acquiring – and practising the following essential skills:

  plotting

  characterisation

  dialogue

  description

  viewpoint

  You’ll also find it useful to study:

  story structure

  conflict and tension

  action and suspense

  pacing

  theme

  These are all learnable skills and it shouldn’t take you long to learn the basics. A decent creative writing course should cover all of them and give you the opportunity to practise them and receive feedback and advice, and there are plenty of books that cover these topics in detail.

  Stay with the action

  If your main character is lying in a hospital bed, or in a ditch, or sitting in his car watching a suspect’s house, he might not get involved in the main action for a while. This is the perfect time to switch to another character’s point of view. Go where the action is. There should always be something happening somewhere.

  Switching the point of view adds variety to your story and makes it more interesting to read. It also makes it more interesting to write – and that means you’ll write it faster, with energy and enthusiasm.

  Switch characters at the start of a new scene or chapter, not during a scene. Make it clear which character is now telling the story, or whose eyes we’re now seeing the action through.

  Make it real

  The fastest way to write a novel is to use real people, real locations, real situations and real dialogue. That means using people and places you know well, events you’ve been personally involved in, and dialogue you’ve overheard or taken part in. Let’s look at these in more detail.

  People

  Using real people can be dangerous. If you place them in disparaging situations and they recognise themselves, they could sue you for libel. But there are some easy ways around this:

  Never use their real names – unless they’ve given their permission.

  Create characters by combining elements from different people: your manager’s bad temper, your cousin’s cowardice, your neighbour’s fondness for guns, and so on. It’s a good idea to give each character an element of your own personality too, so you have a degree of empathy with them – including the villain.

  What do they look like and sound like? Again, take elements from different people you know or have seen and combine them to create a new person. He might have your grandfather’s looks, the window cleaner’s voice, your car mechanic’s sense of fashion, and so on.

  Some people would love to be in your books, and would be happy for their character to get involved in absolutely anything. Ask your friends, relatives, colleagues, neighbours, and anyone else who you think would make a terrific character. If you hear of anyone who needs a good prize for a charity auction, donate the opportunity to be a character in one of your books.

  Places

  Use your own town, city or neighbourhood. You probably know the area inside out, so writing about it will be easy and you won’t need to do any research. Don’t worry about it being too “ordinary”. It will sound interesting – or even exotic – to everyone else.

  As an added bonus, the people who live there will want to read your story to see if you’ve mentioned any local landmarks or people they recognise.

  If the place really is deadly dull, you could make that a feature of the story, or include it as a sub-plot. Perhaps one of the characters enters it for the “dullest village in Britain” contest. How will that turn out, and what will the other villagers think of it?

  Or you could gloss over the setting, simply stating that the events take place in a dusty, featureless street. Concentrate on the characters and the action instead.

  Another option is to make a few changes so it becomes more exciting. Perhaps you could turn it into the place you wish it was, rather than the place it actually is.

  If your story features an exotic location, use somewhere you’ve visited on holiday, or a place you know from a film or TV show.

  Events

  Here are a few ideas that might get you thinking:

  Holidays – especially holiday disasters.

  Romantic dates that went wrong.

  School days.

  Childhood adventures.

  Jobs you’ve had, and the strange things that happened in them.

  Colleagues who did strange things.

  Accidents you’ve seen or been involved in.

  Times when you were drunk.

  Times when you were happy, angry, sad, jealous, and so on.

  Births, marriages and deaths.

  Successes and failures.

  Arguments.

  Christmases you’d rather forget.

  You should be able to extend this list quite easily. See how many more ideas you can come up with. Then cast your mind back and start filling in the details from your own life.

  Dialogue

  Always make a note of any great lines you hear where you’re out and about. If you hear a terrific joke, quip or one-liner, see if you can work it into your story.

  Listen to other people’s conversations whenever you can, but pretend to be engrossed in something else, such as a book or magazine or something on your phone.

  Listen to conversations at work too, especially if one of your colleagues takes a phone call from someone with a complaint, or if he gets told off by his boss. Try to get involved in all the office gossip.

  If you don’t go to work, listen to other people when they’re at work. If you’re sitting in a waiting room, for example, listen to the staff bickerin
g about something that’s gone wrong and who’s to blame. You’ve probably heard this sort of thing hundreds of times but didn’t pay much attention to it. But from now on you should be taking detailed notes.

  If one of your characters has a strong accent or dialect, don’t waste time trying to imitate it in writing. It takes too long and your readers will hate having to decipher it anyway. Simply say he has a strong Scottish accent – or whatever accent he has.

  If he’s from a non-English-speaking country, you could include a foreign word or two, but no more than that, and make sure the meaning is clear. Perhaps one of the other characters asks him what it means. That could also be a good way of revealing what language he speaks and where he’s from.

  Changing the order of his words can be effective. For example, he might say: “At number seventeen, I lived” in an eastern European accent, rather than the more usual “I lived at number seventeen”. He might also avoid using contractions: can’t, couldn’t, don’t, won’t, isn’t, he’s, they’re, and so on.

  If you aren’t sure, just write it in plain English.

  If people know you’re a writer, they’ll often clam up when you’re around in case they end up in one of your books. There’s a simple solution to this: don’t tell them you’re a writer! You could also publish your books under a pen name so they don’t realise it’s you.

  Minimal characters