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March 15, 2007

Jack Woodford's Rules for Writing a Novel

I was asked about this and thought it'd be nice to put it up for those interested. This was a scrap that Chandler had pasted into his notebooks:

Remembered from Trial and Error

1. Plan a length of 75,000 words because all publishers love to cut and 65,000 is about the right length.
2. Write a 5000 word synopsis of the action leaving out descriptive matter and character analysis and dialogue - in short everything but roughly what happens, in a major way.
3. With a blue (or possibly red) [note from Rob - LIKE IT FUCKING MATTERS YOU ANAL FUCK!] pencil, mark off where natural chapter endings may come. It is not necessary that these chapters be of equal length. It would look silly if they were. They may vary from 500 to five thousand words or even more. Nor is the number of chapters important. Thirty would be a good average, which makes an average of 2500 words to a chapter.
4. In a large loose leaf book - letter size [note from Rob - JESUS FUCKING CHRIST!] - head up a page for each chapter with its number and an expanded (about double or treble expanded, not more) synopsis of the business allocated to that chapter. Also note the estimated number of words you are going to use for this chapter.
5. Put all these chapter pages together in a folder and at the end put a couple of pages of analysis and description of the two or three principal characters - a dossier that will make you feel you know them. Describe them physically, spritually, and their education and background - but don't slop all over the lot and write essays.
6. In the days, weeks, or months that follow - BEFORE you actually start writing the novel - let your mind play with it bit by bit, here and there, without reference to temporal order in the story. If you think of any piece of business, character, dialogue, or in fact anything at all about any part of the story that interests you - make a note of it under the appropriate chapter.
7. The time you take on this is up to you. If you have a full mind and like the story you will soon have a full book.
8. Write the first chapter with the best opening you can think of at the moment AND LEAVE IT ALONE. If you start rewriting it and messing with it, you'll never get the book done at all. Leave it lay, brother, until the book is done.
9. Note wordage you actually use and open a shorts and overs account [note from Rob - How much you want to bet this guy irons his underwear?] at the end of your loose leaf folder. In one column put words estimated for each chapter, in the next words used, and use two more columns for shorts and overs of words. This is very important indeed. Because you have to pay back every overage before the book is half written and similarly you have to pick up every short, in expandedwriting, new business, or what have you, before the book is half written. If you don't do this you will get the novel out of proportion and it will be a flop, even if you ever finish it, which you probably will not.
10. The same goes for the second half of the book.
11. If you don't know how much action it takes to fill a 75,000 word novel, synopsize a few and find out. Another way is to figure about two novelettes contain action for a full novel. This does not mean that the same number of incidents may be used and expanded as incidents. It means the same amount of action. In the novel there will be more transition writing, more relief writing, more playing around with dialogue and description. The actual speed of the novel should be as fast, or very nearly as fast, as the novelette, but too much story makes just as dull reading as too little story. The novel reader in general will pay some attention to haow things happen and what short of people they happen to - even if he is the same man as the novelette reader. He will have an instinctive respect for book covers that he will never give to a magazine piece, however good.
12. Don't use more than two, or at most, three main characters at first. Even very good writers get in trouble by trying to handle too many. [Note from Rob - Unless their name is DAVID FUCKING MILCH]
13. Alter your story all you please as you go along PROVIDED you don't go back and rewrite, and PROVIDED you don't stop keeping a shorts and overs account. [Note from Rob - Seriously, the OCD on this guy blows my mind]
14. This is all there is. There isn't any more. We are talking about writing a novel - not just writing fiction. We assume you already know how to write fiction in shorter lengths. If you do, this is all you need to bother about to finish a novel or a hundred novels.

Note by Raymond Chandler. It should of course be born in mind that Jack Woodford can't write worth a damn on any plane BUT he probably knows plenty about how it ought to be done, if he could do it. He estimates three months as ample for a novel chore - even with other work on the side.

Further note by Raymond Chandler. The above is all bunk, in a way, although it may contain germs of truth. I paid no attention to it whatever when I wrote The Big Sleep.

[Note from Rob - With the mathematics involved in doing a graphic novel, I can actually see how the word bank could come into play. The old Stan Lee word of thumb was to have about 100 words per page. So, if you have about 200 pages in your book, you'd need about 20,000 words. That's not counting in for pacing or dramatic effect, but it is a good average to keep in mind. I'm structuring my pages a little differently for this next book than the average 1960's Jack Kirby/Steve Ditko page, but I'll still have about that many words, I reckon. Maybe more. I do really like the bit about doing the synopsis and breaking it down to chapters or scenes.]

Posted by Schamberger at March 15, 2007 08:06 AM