Trying to write

[KeeleyA]

Im not sure how many pages or characters there will be. The reason Im inspired by this novel is because it takes place over a long period of time with various locations, the ending of one character is the beginning of another and it contains science fiction elements.

I mentioned the page count because the book you said you want to emulate is that long and any book over 1,000 pages with a labyrinthine plot (that includes dead ends) is...daunting. After looking at the description, I'm not surprised you haven't started writing yet.

I'm not saying you can't, just that maybe you should chunk the goal down.

The heart of a novel is the scene. Find out the working parts of a scene, as it's done in literary novels (I write genre so I only know how to write a genre scene and don't know if there's a difference in approach). Then try writing a scene in a literary style.

Just one scene, start to finish. Then see where you are.

 

[Montero]

Sometimes, doing plotting, once I am underway on the odd character skit etc, I'll use a door, or even a wall and post-its and string and bluetak to give key events and how they link to each other. OH once colonised the stairwell for 6 months with a book plot.
We don't often invite people round.

ETA Oh hang on, thought this was the can't get it on the page thread. Well, looks like I lost the plot slightly.

 

[msstice]

I keep trying to write fiction not necessarily genre & my 'stories' are always short, stop in the middle of nowhere & are meaningless.

Can anyone give me any advice on how to write stories which are long, have a proper ending & have meaning?

How many times do you revise the story? Is it one draft through, and it doesn't work, and you move on to the next thing? Or, is it, you revised a story ten times and it just didn't come out well and you tried writing ten stories and this happened to all of them?

There are way more experienced writers here, but I'd say the only way to write better (if you have taste that is) is to keep writing until it gets better. Taste of course is a loaded term. There are several famous works I consider to have poor taste. I suppose by taste I mean you can tell good writing when you read it i.e. there has been at least one book/story you've read and said "I'd like to write like that!"

If you have taste, I think all you need to do is keep at it until your writing comes up to the standards of your taste.

 

[Swank]

It's true that I need to give them names but in Against the Day by Thomas Pynchon I think the characters remain quite impersonal.

Is part of the problem that you keep changing your mind what kind of book you want to write? Two month ago it was Huxley, now Pynchon.