Juiced On Writing

In novel writing I am normally quite an organised person. There are some who write without any organisation or planning. Sometimes I wish that I had that skill. But for the methodological side of me, I am not happy to just sit down and write from a simple idea.

I have studied many writing ‘systems’ (for want of a better term) and taken several writing courses, and I’ve also developed ‘systems’ of planning and outlining which generally work with me – or have done until now.

Come my third novel, and I’ve struck a solid wall. The simple idea just seems to want to stick there, despite my best attempts to draw it out. This week I was contacted by Joe Nacisse, offering me the chance to take a look at his new e-book coming out, Jump Start Your Novel.

What better way to both fire up any impetuous I may be missing on my third novel than to try out a new ‘system’ on it, and this would also give me the ability to challenge Joe’s coaching methods as a baptism of fire.

Introduction to Rock Your Writing Career

Jump Start Your Novel, as a downloadable e-book, is available for purchase from Joe Nacisse’s new website, Rock Your Writing Career. Currently you can purchase the e-book for $35 (before the end of March).

However, premium members of Rock Your Writing Career will have access to Jump Start Your Novel and further monthly releases of e-books providing help to get your novel written and published, plus several other benefits. Premium membership will cost $47 per month. If this is beyond you then for $19 per month a basic membership gives you access to podcasts, video tutorials and 25% discount off any e-books such as Jump Start Your Novel, as these are published.

Joe tells me the Rock Your Writing Career membership site is still under some construction, and he will be adding much more. But if you go and take a look, you will see some excellent resources available already (some are free to access while others indicate what’s available for members) on the home page. These include reviews, tips, and a free mini-course on finding a literary agent.

Joseph Nassise has published several novels, including the Templar chronicles so he understands the industry and current markets. You can check out his credentials onsite at Rock Your Writing Career also, or at his own website. He also writes for the new Genre blog, Genreality, which is where I first noticed him (he writes on Tuesdays) when that blog first started up.

Jump Start Your Novel

Statistics:

• 56 pages long, including Title cover page and About the Author
• Table of Contents, Introduction and Appendix
• 11 (short) modules
• 12 Exercises
• One template
• Purchase for $35 (until end of March, which includes a 25% discount)

Introducing Jump Start Your Novel

Jump Start Your Novel doesn’t initially go anywhere strange in terms of structuring a novel. The e-book starts off with Module Two onwards discussing characters, plot, scenes, settings, research, and expanding this out in later modules into a story flow blueprint, timelines, and then structuring – beginnings, middle and ends. The e-book is wound up with a ‘Putting it All Together’ chapter in module eleven.

The author’s introduction explains his development of the Jump Start novel organisation system over writing eight novels, and makes a convincing argument when you read his explanation towards the fact that he doesn’t write chronologically, or in sequence. So how does he keep sight of all those “really cool scenes” and keep his stories coherent?

For those who are die-hard anti-outliners, Joe provides another brief argument for them in Module One, where he likens outlines to creating a travel guide, a simile I very much was taken with. Maps, topography, directions – the ideas started me getting inspired already (plus I was wondering how compatible this might be with diagrammatical outlining such as using mindmaps).

Joe also invites us to take what works for us out of this e-book, and add it to our arsenals, but to discard the things which don’t. However he also asks that we work through the whole system firstly, before discounting.

Working Through Jump Start Your Novel

Jump Start Your Novel initially asked me to develop one sentence right at the start for my novel idea. The Sentence – yuck. It’s a thing which other writing courses and coaches have asked of me, and one which inevitably leads to much nail-biting and procrastination. The author makes this even more difficult in Jump Start for me, because he’s suggesting I try to write one for under twenty words. Double-yuck. And he doesn’t want character names in it?

I went to do it too (you don’t know it, but there’s several hours gap here while I go off to do my Jump Start exercises). My first problem is I decided to write my exercises onto a mindmap within mindmanager and immediately struck an even bigger problem than a twenty word sentence – what would I name my document as? I had no title for this novel either. Pod Novel III suddenly came into being.

I eventually developed a 36 word sentence, which could be counted as 32 if you allowed me to count the hyphenated words as one each. I then thought to turn over to the next page in the e-book to find that the author was giving a sentence example for his next novel which counts at 41 words. Bet him, then!

So far, so good. As it’s been pointed out to me in Jump Start, I now have a handle on both character (including protaganists and antagonists) and plot (including conflict). And I can possibly sell it with my simple sentence too.

Now we moved into character profiling, using six simple questions to get to know the past, present and future of our main character, using ideas borrowed from Randy Ingermanson’s Snowflake Method. This is a method which I’ve used previously also, and have the free to download PDF for in my files. Randy no longer offers the Snowflake method for download, although it is all still available to read on his website. Jump Start Your Novel will give you the link to this also.

As I developed my own main character sketch, learning about her motivation, goals, conflict and epiphany’s, the plot started forming in my mind, or at least the story arc, although I still had no idea how my story would end.

The questions themselves brought up many other considerations, including – for me, two point of view options, first or third person. If I decide to pursue a third person option I may have found my ending with a twist, however this option would also require much more research, and the creation of a new main character.

Jump Start now moved me onto plot, and structuring, with cliff-hangers at certain points in the three act structure (beginning, middle and end), converging the motivation and goals with the conflict.

As I developed these plot (conflict) structures, additional characters and questions required my attention. Before moving onto the rest of Jump Start Your Novel, I took some time out to work on these exercises, and clear my mind also. Organising the outline of a novel does take some time, so despite it’s lack of pages, Jump Start does provide a lot to work around, and you should be prepared to dedicate this time to get the best from it.

And it Continues…

I still have a further 30 or more pages to work through, and that will be done in my own time as I develop my novel idea into an organised outline. I have browsed quickly through the rest of Jump Start Your Novel and have some brief comments on particular sections -

Story Flow Blueprint

Jump Start Your Novel’s story flow blueprint isn’t a new concept either, but briefly takes the new writer through particular action and plot points leading along a well-known hero’s journey structure. Steps are listed to guide the writer into the scenes required to build their novel, in consecutive order.

Initially I thought this information more comprehensively available elsewhere. But I’d forgotten the main audience for this e-book, that of the newbie writer who knows there’s a book in there, but perhaps hasn’t spent a lot of time on writing courses, or reading how-to-write books themselves.

I’ve also seen step by step structures like this documented easily via graphs – one local writing magazine even did it as a colourful design of actual steps with the author walking up them. However, in Jump Start Your Novel, the written form of this blueprint is more appropriate, given the e-book lists 19 steps which may make a graph or drawing quite busy.

Seeing the structural blueprint listed this way for me also appealed, and I can see how helpful this may be to writers who write non-chronologically, with scenes all over the place. They can then go back and identify where their scenes work within a recognised story timeline.

Overall

Settings are explored, character sketches expanded, and Jump Start Your Novel continues to build on work done previously throughout the e-book, arriving at several upper level sentences / paragraphs and expanded ones sitting below. For instance, by the end of working through this e-book, the writer will benefit from having worked on and developed a one paragraph description of plot, a four paragraph description of plot, and a four page plot summary.

The final Module – Putting it All Together, introduces an organisational approach for all the planning work. The author uses a ring-binder to file all the documents created out of this system. I would suggest that perhaps some tips about how to organise the documents might be placed at the front of the e-book, for those who amass all those documents across multiple platforms, both manual or electronic. For instance, as I was reading this as an e-book I was already on my computer, and naturally moved over to software to explore the first exercises. I personally have already one mind-map document, and a few other documents, plus some scrawled notes.

Although the ring-binder filing approach doesn’t work for me, the overall list of elements covered and developed within Jump Start is helpful in identifying just what it is I will create out of following the e-book.

This e-book isn’t about an organisation system for writing, however, but rather – organising your idea into a workable outline ready for you to start writing that novel.

Summary

Within Jump Start Your Novel I found some excellent inspiration – and methods – to jump start myself into getting my third novel outlined and ready to go. This surprises me on a shallow front, as the concepts included in this e-book are not new to me at all, having been covered in writing courses and how-to write books I’ve read deeply.

What happened here is something very interesting. Somehow, Joe Nacisse has managed to produce a How-To Write e-book which not only comprehensively introduces a workable system for starting out in writing a novel, but he’s accomplished it within only 56 pages. I’ve seen singular sections of some of this take other books or longer courses several chapters to deal with. Yet in Jump Start, the new writer is introduced to many methods which are easily explained, but with enough detail to get to work on.

Jump Start Your Novel is written informally and simply, but with examples given from the author’s own writing projects, and those of others. Joe Nacisse provides a chatty but experienced voice in guiding the new author into a system which basically works, but is flexible enough to allow the insertion or deletion of other methods where the writer finds a need.

This e-book sits as a stand-alone but comprehensive guide for the new writer, but also provides an excellent reference to page back on at future dates for new writers like me. I look forward to seeing what other resources become available over time from Rock Your Writing Career.

LinkMes:

• Rock Your Writing Career
• Jump Start Your Novel (purchase)

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