Can't put it down on the Page

[Teresa Edgerton]

Well, even if you want to publish the novel, there is nothing (as Brian says) to stop you from experimenting. Try different approaches, try different styles. Write scenes that may or may not find their way into the final novel, because by doing that you might gain important information that you will include. Listen in on off-stage coversations between your characters. Some writers start with the dialogue in a scene, and then fill in everything else that needs to be there once they've got the dialogue working. Maybe that will work for you. Or maybe start writing action or description—whatever gets the creative process started. It's not the same for every author, nor always the same for every book written by a given author.

 

[Montero]

One thing I do is to write a page or so, or up to a full short story, about each main character. Not intended for use in the book, but brainstorming the characters and seeing what pops. Going for a silly example,

"Mildred loved rituals. Whether it was the pomp of a high Anglican service, with gold plate on the altar and the singing of a well trained choir, or a perfectly laid tea tray, for Mildred, the ritual was everything. So when Bob knocked on the door, uninvited, and expected to be let in, she was not pleased. Being a polite lady, she of course offered him tea and started to lay a tea tray while the kettle boiled.
"Oh don't bother with all that faff, just bung a tea bag in the mug, that'll do me."

 

[Oligonicella]

"I already have the plot for my novel I just can't put it down on the page. "

If you have the characters and plot, you can put it to page.

What, specifically, is stopping you?

 

[Phyrebrat]

The way to start is to start.

You can’t edit or improve nothing.

Novels are a journey. You have your set piece ideas but there is no sense of movement within your snapshots. What are the stakes for those characters? Your job is to make us care for them so we keep reading. If you can’t describe your characters’ personalities how can anyone help you?

I wonder if you’re looking for some secret key to unlock the writing; there really isn’t one. You have to start. Bin it if you don’t like it but every word written is a step nearer your completed novel.

 

[Biskit]

I already have the plot for my novel I just can't put it down on the page. Any advice? The whole thing will be like Against the Day by Thomas Pynchon but with these plots

• underground rosicrucian rituals under Dublin in the late eighteenth century
• underground native american rituals of magic during the early American republic
• Lord Byron in Southern Europe
• a Muslim from Napoleonic North Africa in underground masonic rituals of Ordo Templi Orientis under Paris
• Fascist Rome

As others have said, that is not a plot, it's a collection of settings and backgrounds for a plot, and it sounds like this is your first outing into novel writing, so you have to expect to struggle. If someone has told you writing is easy, hit them on the head with a dictionary and move on. You are embarking on a serious challenge, you are going to have to learn as you go, and the first lesson from this thread ought to be that almost everyone is advising you to do something different. Not only is this novel writing a challenge, but the process has no one right answer, and a part of the learning process is going to be discovering what works for you.

Personally, I don't plot or plan, I just write, and fix the mess later. Given the disparate collection of ideas you have, my starting point would be to write a collection of shorts stories, scenes, vignettes, newspapers articles or reports on suspected troublemakers for the local security service, and then use those to explore the world and possible characters, and because it's exploration don't worry about making those snippets consistent***.


At the end, you put that lot into the back of a draw for later reference while you get on with writing the novel that has now crystallised in your head, or you find one or more of those snippets evolves into your story.

As @Brian G Turner says, start experimenting.


*** As an aside, when I'm playing with things like this, inconsistencies come in two flavours - either I've got my head totally muddled over what's going on, or I've got unreliable narrators, which is far more fun.

 

[Toby Frost]

This isn't helping me learn how to put the novel on the page.

The way to start is to start.

Most of what writing involves is saying what happened next. Yes, there's theme, tone, character and all the rest to think about - and you do have to think about them. But most of writing a novel is saying what happened next in the story. That means shrinking down from the grand ideas and saying "What is this person doing?".

 

[Dan Jones]

This isn't helping me learn how to put the novel on the page.

Have you tried writing?