You may have seen adverts for software like Acme’s Write Your Novel, which make extravagant boasts about how they can make you a successful novelist.  Next time you see one of these adverts, have a look at the product’s website for a list of its ‘features’ and you will likely find a long list of things you can do yourself, for free.

As a rule, these packages offer the most basic of novel writing environments, providing as they do a text box that allows you to write your novel.  The text box is often less powerful than what is provided with Wordpad, provided free with Windows, or TextEdit on the Mac.   Many have no spell check facility; no ability to create bullet points (although it’s debatable why you’d want to do this in a novel); and you’re stuck with whatever font has been decided on by the programmer. Why bother having such a limited program to work with, day in, day out, for perhaps months on end? Computers come with better text editors than that!  If you want something more powerful than what comes with your computer for free, there’s Microsoft Word or its free and powerful competitor, OpenOffice.org.

There are also other ‘features’ of these novel-writing programs, of course, but they generally fall into two categories:questionnaires about your characters and questionnaires about your locations; with the occasional database built in to store your answers. Once again, you can get something like this for free by reading on – and unlike many of these expensive programs, you can print out your answers and store them however you like.  It’s important to remember that the exact questions you ask, and answer, are to some extent irrelevant.  What is important is that you know everything you need to be comfortable with your characters and settings.  If you know them, if you can see them in your imagination, then your writing will show that and your readers will have a better chance of seeing and feeling your characters in their own imaginations.

Let’s begin.

Character Questionnaire

Complete one of these for every main character, be it your hero, villain or a main supporting character.  Answer all the questions you need to know your character a little better than you think you’ll need to.

1. Have they changed their name since birth? If so, what were they originally called and why did they change it?
2. What gender are they?
3. Have they changed gender? If so, when?
4. Where were they born?
5. When were they born?
6. Where did they grow up? If it’s different to where they were born, why did they move?
7. Where do they live now? If it’s different to where they grew up, why did they move?
8. What is their mother’s name (including maiden name)?
9. What is their father’s name?
10. Are they adopted?
11. If they are, do they know?
12. If they are adopted, what are the names of their birth parents
13. If they are adopted, what are the circumstances behind their adoption?
14. How tall is your character?
15. What colour is their skin?
16. What colour are their eyes?
17. What colour is their hair?
18. What do they sound like (accent, tone of voice, pitch, etc)?
19. What sort of personality do they have?
20. What level of education do they have?
21. When did they leave education and why?
22. What sort of job do they have?
23. Do they like their job?
24. What would they ideally be doing?
25. What is their life’s ambition?
26. Are they in touch with their family?
27. If so, are they close?
28. Are they in a relationship at the moment?
29. If yes, what is the relationship like?
30. If yes, who are they in a relationship with?
31. If yes, are they faithful?
32. If they aren’t in a relationship, why not?
33. If they aren’t in a relationship, have they been in one in the past?
34. If there anything else we should know about the character?

Location Questionnaire

Locations are important, both for providing an interesting and imaginative environment that propels the story along at a fast pace but they also provide the atmosphere that makes your readers suspend disbelief and really feel like they are there, inside your story, watching what is going on.  They are as important as the characters who walk through them.

1. Where is this location?
2. Is it significant to any of the characters in the story? Why?
3. Describe the sounds in this location.
4. Describe the smells in this location.
5. Describe the appearance of this location.
6. Is there anything in this location (e.g. furniture, trees, sewer entrances, burned out cars, etc.)? Describe these things.
7. Why is this location in your story?
8. Is there anything else we should know about this location?

Story Questionnaire

Story is important.  We’ve all come across a novel where there appears to be no story whatsoever, or if there is it’s a simple excuse for an action sequence or set of jokes.  Books of this sort rarely, if ever, top the bestseller lists and are often forgotten soon after they pass out of the ‘new releases’ section of the local bookshop.  The story is what propels the novel.  It’s what grabs a reader as hard as any captivating character, so you need to have a firm grasp on where your novel is going.

1. Who is your main protagonist (the person on which the story will focus, and usually through whose eyes we will view the story unfold)?
2. Why is this person the protagonist?
3. Who is the main antagonist (the person causing problems and conflict for your protagonist to overcome)?
4. Why is this person the antagonist?
5. What is the problem the protagonist must solve?
6. Why is it important that they solve it?
7. How will this problem be solved?
8. How is the protagonist introduced to the story?
9. How do they come across the problem around which this story will revolve?
10. Is there anyone who will help them solve this problem? Why?
11. Is there anyone who will hinder them in solving this problem (other than the main antagonist)? Why?

These questionnaires are by no means the be-all and end-all of storytelling but if you can answer them fully and to the best of your ability, expanding on them where you feel you need to, then you should have a very good grip on your story.

Once you know what you’re writing and you have a good picture of your characters, locations and so forth in your head you will find that you don’t need expensive software to help you write. You can write by hand, with a typewriter, with something like WordPad or even with fully-functional word processing software like Word or OpenOffice.org. You have the tools at your fingertips because the tools of the storytelling trade are in your head. Everything else is simply an aid to writing, nothing more.

Finally, don’t worry if what you write doesn’t seem top-notch – it may even seem like the worst thing ever written. That’s not a problem. The thing to remember is that you need to get your story down on paper or on the screen. Once your story is finished and you have it there at your fingertips, you can go over it again, refine it and develop any areas you feel are lacking. This editorial stage is where stories become good, readable tales that you might find people actually enjoy but you have to remember that in order to get to the editorial stage, you must push on through the first draft.  To get to the truffles, you have to wade through dirt.