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How To Become A Professional Novelist

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Many dream of becoming professional novelists, but only a few take the required steps to write a novel. If you’re still considering the idea of being a professional novelist, this article discusses a few ways to achieve this.

Read Extensively

Samuel Johnson once said that writers spend most of their time reading; they would even turn over half a library just to make one book. To become an excellent writer, you must absorb fantastic literature. And the more books you read, the more you expose yourself to high-quality writing. Through reading, you internalize text elements and later implement them in your work. Reading also gives you ideas you can use as inspiration to start writing.

Explore the World

Although you can read books and learn about storytelling techniques, you cannot write someone’s story as yours. You’ll need to create your story from real-life experiences, and here’s where traveling and exploring the world comes in.

Exploring the world and recording your experiences can help create a good story. Most successful novelists write stories based on their experiences. Even if you have specific experiences for your first novel, it’s not wrong to explore and gather more. Travel more, meet new people, try new things, and record anything that spikes your interest, even if it’s a story someone told you. You may be interested in using it in your writing with their permission, of course.

Find the Story You Want to Tell

As you read extensively and explore the world, you’ll come across numerous story ideas. This may tempt you to choose one and start writing but don’t. A story idea may be great, but that’s not enough. You need to write about something you’re passionate about, so you won’t easily be fatigued or demotivated to work through the nights.

When a story idea crosses your mind, think deeply about how it connects to your experience and whether you strongly desire it to be narrated in literature. Take time and feel the story’s impact on readers and society. All these factors will help you establish if the story idea is a must-write.

Build On Characters

Once you have a story idea, the next thing is to build on characters. Characters make a story great, and there are different types of character archetypes you can choose to have in your work. However, having characters alone is not enough. Your characters need to have inner and outer lives. The outer part is the story idea, events, climax, twists, conflicts, and resolutions occurring in the novel. Then there’s the inner component you have to establish.

Write Often

If you commit to writing every day, your thoughts will become clearer, your grammar will improve, and you’ll enjoy writing more. Choose a specific number of words you can write daily, and ensure you consistently hit your target. With time, your writing will be more successful, and you’ll become a professional novelist.

Becoming a professional novelist involves much work, but it’s worth it in the long run. The most crucial thing is reading extensively, exploring and recording the world, building on characters, and practicing writing daily. With time, you’ll master the skill of writing and become a great author.

 

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