SETTING the PACE for YOUR NOVEL

So you want to write a book. There's a story bottled up inside of you, begging to come out. Characters fill your head. Ideas for scenes blossom in your mind. You can hardly wait to entertain the world with your masterpiece.

But how do you organize all of that rampant creativity? How do you keep from getting lost along the way? And how, in the midst of your busy life, are you ever going to find the time?

Whether you're contemplating your first book or your twentieth, Robert Ray has solid advice to offer in his how-to book, THE WEEKEND NOVELIST.

Ray's basic premise is that a year's worth of weekends will be long enough for you to complete a first draft of your novel, but only if you have a solid game plan. He provides a week-by-week blueprint that will carry you from the initial burst of inspiration through the final, deeply satisfying page of your opus.

BASIC BUILDING BLOCKS

The first half of THE WEEKEND NOVELIST walks you through the essential preliminaries of setting, character, conflict and dialogue. Aspiring writers will benefit greatly from Ray's willingness to take a project down to bedrock basics, and even writers with a number of finished books under their belts will find these chapters to be nourishing food for thought and a useful refresher course.

To clarifying the points that he makes, Ray has selected a published novel to serve as the exemplar of his lessons: THE ACCIDENTAL TOURIST by Anne Tyler. The passages he quotes bring his teachings to life on the page, translating abstract instruction into vibrant fiction. People who are only familiar with the movie will benefit greatly from this in-depth study of Anne Tyler's deceptively simple writing style.


ADVANCED TECHNIQUES

Even the most accomplished multi-published writers stands to benefit from the second half of THE WEEKEND NOVELIST. In this portion of the book, Ray provides a detailed analysis of the three-act structure, a literary paradigm that was first set forth by the ancient Greeks. He freely acknowledges that he was also deeply influence by a far more recent proponent of this technique: screenwriter Syd Field. But Field's book on the subject, SCREENWRITING, is heavily slanted to the needs of a visual medium (film), and I found myself to be more frustrated than enlightened when I encountered his book, years ago. For me, the glory of THE WEEKEND NOVELIST is Ray's ability to filter the information and tailor it to the needs of a manuscript.

The pacing of the three-act structure is based on two premises: that each act has a unique and distinct function to perform, and that all acts are not created equal.

The fundamental purpose of Act One is introduction. The characters, setting, tone and conflict of the book all make their initial appearance here, and thereby make a promise to the reader about the sort of book that will follow. This act should comprise no more than twenty-five percent of the book's total word count.

The fundamental purpose of Act Two is complication. Each character has an agenda, and the second act charts the ways in which those agendas clash. As your central character pursues his or her goal, each new attempt at reaching it makes matters worse. This act should comprise at least fifty percent of the book's total word count, and should split into two sections, joined by a volatile midpoint that it comes at the center of the act and of the book as a whole.

The fundamental purpose of Act Three is resolution. In your first act, you placed your main character on a tire swing. All through Act Two, you have been winding the rope of that swing more and more tightly. Now, at the beginning of Act Three, you let go and let nature take its course. The rope will unwind, slowly at first, then with more and more momentum, until it seems as if your main character will be flung out into space. Instead, if he just hangs on, the final event will be a return to stasis, to calm, to the status quo where all is at rest. This act should comprise no more than twenty-five percent of the book's total word count, and should bring a sense of closure and completion to the reader.

THE WEEKEND NOVELIST explores further useful subdivisions of the page count within each act ('plot points' and 'pinch points'), as well as a wealth of useful detail about the subtleties of building a solid reading experience within the boundaries of your book. All in all, this is much more than a pain-by-numbers approach to the delicate question of pacing your novel. It's a flexible skeleton that frees you to flesh out your story as creatively as possible, secure in the knowledge that the result will be balanced and compelling.

Of all the 'how to' books about writing I've examined, this is the one that I come back to, again and again. While Robert Ray would be the first to admit that his is not the only effective way to structure your novel, it's a time-honored method that has worked for centuries and can work for you, as well.