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    Storytelling: How To Write A Novel
    Storytelling: How To Write A Novel
    Storytelling: How To Write A Novel
    Ebook327 pages5 hours

    Storytelling: How To Write A Novel

    By Jonathan Moeller

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    About this ebook

    Want to write a novel? This is the book for you!

    The key to writing a good novel is to tell a good story, and this book will show you how to tell a good story in novel form. We'll look at all the important parts of a satisfying story structure:

    -The introduction. How to set the stage for your book.

    -The conflict and the inciting incident. All stories revolve around conflict, and the more emotionally significant the conflict, the better.

    -Rising action. Your characters need to take action to resolve their conflict, and they will experience setbacks and failures.

    -The climax. The more significant the conflict, the more powerful its climax and resolution.

    -The resolution. We see how the conflict and its resolution have changed the characters.

    Finally, this book contains a complete annotated copy of the author's novel SILENT ORDER: IRON HAND to provide an example of a novel that follows the rules of story structure.

    From the introduction to the resolution, STORYTELLING: HOW TO WRITE A NOVEL will show you how to write a compelling novel of your own!

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherJonathan Moeller
    Release dateMar 1, 2021
    ISBN9781005433956
    Storytelling: How To Write A Novel
    Author

    Jonathan Moeller

    Standing over six feet tall, Jonathan Moeller has the piercing blue eyes of a Conan of Cimmeria, the bronze-colored hair of a Visigothic warrior-king, and the stern visage of a captain of men, none of which are useful in his career as a computer repairman, alas.He has written the "Demonsouled" trilogy of sword-and-sorcery novels, and continues to write the "Ghosts" sequence about assassin and spy Caina Amalas, the "$0.99 Beginner's Guide" series of computer books, and numerous other works.Visit his website at:http://www.jonathanmoeller.comVisit his technology blog at:http://www.jonathanmoeller.com/screed

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      Book preview

      Storytelling - Jonathan Moeller

      PROLOGUE

      A prologue is a short preamble before the main story where you introduce the situation and certain facts about the setting to the reader, facts that your protagonists may not discover until later in the novel. The disadvantage of a prologue is that you will probably need to continue the introduction within the main body of the story since a prologue is usually not enough to introduce the reader to the protagonists and the main conflict in an interesting way. The advantage of a prologue is that you can show the reader vital facts about the story, and obtaining those facts might be a central plot point for the main characters.

      I happened to read a good example of an effective prologue before I started writing this chapter – the mystery novel Field of Prey, by John Sandford. The novel revolves around detective Lucas Davenport’s efforts to find a pair of serial killers operating in rural Minnesota. The prologue introduces the two serial killers and shows how they stumbled across their preferred method of capturing their victims. In terms of story structure, that means the reader immediately knows who the killers are, even though Davenport and the other detectives do not. The actual plot does not kick off until the first chapter, when a pair of teenagers accidentally discover where the serial killers have been hiding the bodies of their victims. But throughout the book, the reader’s advance knowledge from the prologue adds an additional layer of tension to the story, especially when one of the investigators stumbles across the killers without realizing his mortal peril.

      Field of Prey had an effective prologue, but I have to admit a prologue is my least favorite technique for an introduction. In the hands of a capable writer, a prologue works, but I’ve seen a lot of prologues used to dump information on the reader the writer couldn’t figure out how to reveal in the story or to introduce a character who doesn’t turn up until two-thirds of the way through the book. If you do use a prologue, you will likely have to combine it with one of the other two introductory techniques we will discuss in this

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