Ready, Set, Novel! Plan and Plot your Upcoming Masterpiece (first impressions)

Since the weather has gone from cold and miserable to warm and actually-springlike today I ventured down to my nearest Waterstones while on my lunch break to see what I could get with some of my birthday money. Almost as soon as I stepped in a huge display of notebooks, pads, stationery, cards and books caught my eye. I do have some magpie-like tendencies when it comes to books and stationery (plus it was the first display in the shop), and so I wandered over to have a look and my eyes immediately alighted on this...

Ready, Set, Novel! by Chris Baty, Lindsey Grant and Tavia Stewart-Streit

(Apologies for the terrible photo quality in this post, my camera is not the best.)

Ready, Set, Novel! is a book about writing. It is a book to help people write that novel they've had in their head for years but don't know how to make it work, or people who would like to write a novel but who have yet to hit upon the perfect idea for one.

I have had ideas for various novels floating around my head for years, but have had trouble thinking exactly how to get started and write them, and so I was intrigued by this book, even more so when I noticed that it was written by some of the organisers of NaNoWriMo. I picked it up, flicked through it briefly and did not put it back down. I browsed some more to see if there was anything I would prefer to get instead but, finding nothing, I bought the book and returned to the office, excited.

Having now flicked through the book in more depth on my bus journey home, it appears that the authors have done a good job of covering all the main bases regarding to writing a novel: character, dialogue, setting, mood, theme and so on. The parts are covered by various activities which involve the reader (or rather, the author-to-be!) working out things about their novel simply by scribbling things down. The tone of the book seems light-hearted and friendly, the same kind of tone used on the NaNoWriMo site really.

From the blurb:

"These handy tips, battle-tested activities, and bits of creative mayhem have helped thousands of NaNoWriMo participants put pen to paper and are sure to get you geared up to start writing."

I'm hoping to use this to plot one particular novel that I have in my head (I may even post some of my progress here) and probably will post a review of Ready, Set, Novel! when I have a better understanding of it. For now, I will say that I feel that I may find that this book has been written for someone of a slightly younger age group than myself, but I may only feel that way because I have a degree in Creative Writing specifically, while this book is written for everyone, experienced in writing or not. We shall see!

I'm really looking forward to using this and seeing how it compares to other similar books. The 'interactive writing exercises' element reminds me of Keri Smith's Finish This Book, though the latter has more of an established plot to follow, while Ready, Set, Novel! is literally just for your own story, with minimal prompts, designed for you to freehand within some (relatively minor) constraints. I enjoy having some structure to how I go about writing, so I hope that with the gentle guidance of this book I may finally be able to start writing my own novels.


Ready, Set, Novel! is available from Waterstones for £11.99, or on Amazon for £8.27 (excluding postage).